January Read: Clear by Carys Davies

Scottish Wanderlust Book Club kicks off 2025 with a short novel

After a long hiatus, the Scottish Wanderlust Book Club is starting up again with a book to discuss in January. I’ve chosen Clear by Carys Davies - a short, beautifully written book - to kick off the year.

“John, an impoverished Scottish minister, has accepted a job evicting the lone remaining occupant of an island north of Scotland—Ivar, who has been living alone for decades, with only the animals and the sea for company. Though his wife, Mary, has serious misgivings about the errand, he decides to go anyway, setting in motion a chain of events that neither he nor Mary could have predicted.”

The nuts and bolts:

• The discussion will begin on January 31st via a series of discussion questions posted in the Facebook Group. Let me know if you have any discussion question suggestions, I’m happy to incorporate them.

• I will post the same questions here in the comments of this Substack post for those who don’t use Facebook - at this time there probably won’t be many others discussing here, but it may grow.

• Don’t worry about the 12AM start time on the Facebook Event Page, its arbitrary. I will post the discussion questions at some point on Saturday the 31st. If you aren’t online when the discussions start, no worries - you can join in at any time in the future.

• You can find the book in the usual places/formats including libraries, audiobook, kindle etc. If you are a Bookshop.org supporter, you can support independent bookshops and I will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase via my affiliate link here:

• The infamous algorithms often keep people from seeing group updates, so if you would like to receive book club info via email, Click Here to Sign Up.

I look forward to the discussion of Clear at the end of January! Hope to see you there :)

Lilly

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And in other book news, I’ve added a load of new bookshops to the Scottish Bookshop Directory thanks to so much great feedback from bookshop lovers on my Facebook Post. I’m really excited about future posts and collaborations that will arise from this directory and a wonderful community of readers, writers, and bookshop owners :)

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