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The novella is an undersung art form, but consistently proves its weight. Witness the success of Clare Keegan’s just-about-perfect Small Things Like These, shortlisted for the Booker in 2022 and soon a film starring Cillian Murphy. Welsh author Carys Davies’s award-winning first novel West was a miniature masterpiece and she’s back with a third that clocks in at just under 150 pages. Set on a remote Scottish island in 1843, against the twin upheavals of the Highland Clearances and the Great Disruption (in which rebellious church ministers broke from the system of patronage to set up the Free Church), it pivots on the evolving relationships between Ivah, the island’s last-remaining inhabitant, John, a well-meaning minister who has come to evict him, and John’s wife Mary waiting anxiously on the mainland. This quiet, careful novel feels built from the very elements themselves as it gently depicts the unexpected moments of connection, in particular between its two male characters – neither of whom speak the other’s language. Novels this unassuming, surprising and profound are special indeed.