
Clear
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Russ Bain
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By:
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Carys Davies
About this listen
“Tender, riveting, and inventive is Clear, the newest offering and masterpiece from the brilliant Carys Davies. It will take your breath away…What a thrill.” —Sarah Jessica Parker
*Named a Best Book of the Year by Vogue, The Washington Post, Kirkus Reviews, and NPR*
Winner of the 2024 Bookmark Festival Book of Year
Shortlisted for the 2024 Books Are My Bag Award and the Historical Writers’ Association Crown Award
Longlisted for Blackwell’s Book of the Year and the 2024 Saltire Society Literary Award
A “daring and necessary…sophisticated and playful” (The New York Times) novel from an award-winning writer, Clear is the story of a minister dispatched to a remote island to “clear” its last remaining inhabitant—an unforgettable tale of resilience, change, and hope.
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.
Shortly after John reaches the island, he falls down a cliff and is found, unconscious and badly injured, by Ivar who takes him home and tends to his wounds. “Clear chronicles the surprising bond that develops between these two men…pack[ing] a great deal of power into a compact tale” (The Wall Street Journal) about connection, home, and hope—in which John begins to learn Ivar’s language, and Ivar sees himself reflected through the eyes of another person for the first time in decades.
Unfolding during the final stages of the infamous Scottish Clearances—a period of the 19th century which saw whole communities of the rural poor driven off the land in a relentless program of forced evictions—this singular novel explores what binds us together in the face of insurmountable difference, the way history shapes our deepest convictions, and how the human spirit can endure despite all odds. Moving and unpredictable, “a love letter to the scorching power of language” (The Guardian), Clear is “a jewel of a novel” (The Washington Post)—a profound and unforgettable listen.
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- A Novel
- By: Sarah Moss
- Narrated by: Morven Christie
- Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
They rarely speak to each other, but they take notice - watching from the safety of their cabins, peering into the half-lit drizzle of a Scottish summer day, making judgments from what little they know of their temporary neighbors. On the longest day of the year, the hours pass nearly imperceptibly as twelve people go from being strangers to bystanders to allies, their attention forced into action as tragedy sneaks into their lives.
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Beautifully written and beautifully read.
- By Susan on 01-30-21
By: Sarah Moss
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The Coast Road
- A Novel
- By: Alan Murrin
- Narrated by: Jessica Regan
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Set in 1994, The Coast Road tells the story of two women—Izzy Keaveney, a housewife, and Colette Crowley, a poet. Colette has left her husband and sons for a married man in Dublin. When she returns to her home in County Donegal to try to pick up the pieces of her old life, her husband, Shaun, a successful businessman, denies her access to her children.
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Fabulous
- By Suzanna on 06-13-24
By: Alan Murrin
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The Extinction of Irena Rey
- By: Jennifer Croft
- Narrated by: Lanessa Tremblett
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Eight translators arrive at a house in a primeval Polish forest on the border of Belarus. It belongs to the world-renowned author Irena Rey, and they are there to translate her magnum opus, Gray Eminence. But within days of their arrival, Irena disappears without a trace. The translators, who hail from eight different countries but share the same reverence for their beloved author, begin to investigate where she may have gone while proceeding with work on her masterpiece.
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Unique plot
- By Kinga on 03-30-24
By: Jennifer Croft
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Burma Sahib
- A Novel
- By: Paul Theroux
- Narrated by: Charlie Anson
- Length: 17 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
At age nineteen, young Eton graduate Eric Blair set sail for India, dreading the assignment ahead. Along with several other young conscripts, he would be trained for three years as a servant of the British Empire, overseeing the local policemen in Burma. Navigating the social, racial, and class politics of his fellow British at the same time as he learned the local languages and struggled to control his men would prove difficult enough. But doing all of this while grappling with his own self-worth, his sense that he was not cut out for this, is soon overwhelming for the young Blair.
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Glorious writing
- By Nina Jacobson on 02-21-24
By: Paul Theroux
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The Axeman's Carnival
- By: Catherine Chidgey
- Narrated by: Nic Sampson
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Tama is just a helpless chick when he is rescued by Marnie, and this is where his story might have ended. “If it keeps me awake,” says Marnie's husband Rob, a farmer, “I'll have to wring its neck.” But with Tama come new possibilities for the couple's future. Tama can speak, and his fame is growing. Outside, in the pines, his father warns him of the wickedness wrought by humans. Indoors, Marnie confides in him about her violent marriage. The more Tama sees, the more the animal and the human worlds—and all the precarity, darkness and hope within them—bleed into one another.
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Something delightfully different
- By cvchaney on 12-21-24
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Star 111
- By: Lutz Seiler, Tess Lewis - translator
- Narrated by: BJ Harrison
- Length: 16 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
November 1989. The Berlin Wall has just fallen when the East German couple Inge and Walter, following a secret dream they've harbored all their lives, set out for life in the West. Carl, their son, refuses to keep watch over the family home and instead heads to Berlin, where he lives in his father's car until he is taken in by a group of squatters. Led by a shepherd and his goat, the pack of squatters sets up the first alternative bar in East Berlin and are involved in guerrilla occupations.
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About 30% incomprehensible
- By Eric on 01-27-25
By: Lutz Seiler, and others
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Hard by a Great Forest
- A Novel
- By: Leo Vardiashvili
- Narrated by: Luke Thompson
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Saba is just a child when he flees the fighting in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia with his older brother, Sandro, and father, Irakli, for asylum in England. Two decades later, all three men are struggling to make peace with the past, haunted by the places and people they left behind.
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Evocative and deeply moving
- By 2Rivers on 04-11-24
By: Leo Vardiashvili
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The Safekeep
- By: Yael van der Wouden
- Narrated by: Stina Nielsen, Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past.
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This One Should Win
- By K. Bella Bestia on 10-13-24
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Enlightenment
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Perry
- Narrated by: Alex Jennings
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Thomas Hart and Grace Macaulay have lived all their lives in the small Essex town of Aldleigh. Though separated in age by three decades, the pair are kindred spirits—torn between their commitment to religion and their desire to explore the world beyond their small Baptist community. It is two romantic relationships that will rend their friendship, and in the wake of this rupture, Thomas develops an obsession with a vanished nineteenth-century astronomer said to haunt a nearby manor, and Grace flees Aldleigh entirely for London.
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Oddly uncompelling
- By mary on 06-16-24
By: Sarah Perry
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Wild Houses
- By: Colin Barrett
- Narrated by: Damian Gildea
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The riotous, raucous, and deeply resonant debut novel from “one of the best story writers in the English language today” (Financial Times), Wild Houses follows two outsiders caught in the crosshairs of a small-town revenge kidnapping gone awry.
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Insider look at a small crime
- By Probably did on 03-24-24
By: Colin Barrett
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Heart, Be at Peace
- A Novel
- By: Donal Ryan
- Narrated by: Anne Marie Ryan, Ciaran O'Brien, Donal Ryan, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From one of the most acclaimed Irish writers today, a new novel about smalltown Ireland that explores a community on the mend and the power of love and trauma to both bring people together and divide them
By: Donal Ryan
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Is a River Alive?
- By: Robert Macfarlane
- Narrated by: Robert Macfarlane
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes listeners on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories, and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada.
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Love of language / Love of nature / Moral clarity
- By Michael McNulty on 05-21-25
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The Alternatives
- A Novel
- By: Caoilinn Hughes
- Narrated by: Sarah Bolger, Aisling Franciosi, Caoilinn Hughes, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Flattery sisters were plunged prematurely into adulthood when their parents died in tragic circumstances. Now in their thirties—all single, all with PhDs—they are each attempting to do meaningful work in a rapidly foundering world. The four lead disparate, distanced lives, from classrooms in Connecticut to ritzy catering gigs in London’s Notting Hill, until one day their oldest sister, a geologist haunted by a terrible awareness of the earth’s future, abruptly vanishes from her work and home.
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Great character development.
- By CJW on 04-24-24
By: Caoilinn Hughes
Beautiful but Slow
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Unusual and touching
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Clear is foreshadowing and irony
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Enchanting
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Stunning narrative and performance
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Poetic
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Fascinating
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Poetic language
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Narration is superb
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Perhaps too wishful
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