That gap in the data — a yearlong interval between the plane crash and the start of barnacle growth — might be merely puzzling were it observed on the flaperon alone. But the entirety of the MH370 debris recovered so far displays this anomaly. Of the three dozen or so pieces of the plane that have been collected, not a single one has marine life on it that matches what you would expect to see if, as with the pumice Bryan studies, the debris had spent 16 months steadily gathering marine life from the waters it had traveled through.
One piece, a fragment of a closet door from inside the cabin, was found “heavily colonised by the Lepas anatifera barnacle,” according to an official report, but of the nearly 400 specimens recovered, the largest were just 20 millimeters long, implying an age of only “45 to 50 days.”
The second reason is that, psychologically, one of the drivers of our actions is our effort to minimize regret. If we make a choice and it turns out to be wrong, we feel bad. But what if we make a choice, switch, and then find out our first decision was actually correct? We feel worse. We know this about ourselves, and so, when presented with the option to switch away from our cup, it is not very enticing to do so.
At its finest, Clear is a love letter to the scorching power of language, a power that Davies has long understood. She writes with amazing economy: in a few words she can summon worlds. The darkly funny West somehow carried all the weight of American hope and hubris between its narrow covers. Clear is written with the same spareness but, despite moments of affecting poignancy, too often it feels underwritten, even thin. Animated by his boyish wonder and the careful ritual of his daily tasks, the silent, big-hearted Ivar comes slowly, tenderly, into focus; but serious, anxious John remains out of reach. Davies grants us only rare glimpses into his conscience, which he determinedly pushes to one side, and fewer still into his heart, so that his growing preoccupation with Ivar’s language comes to feel less like an awakening than a smokescreen, for the reader as much as himself.
Croft's novel is about a lot of things: the complexities and beauties of translation, climate change and the mass extinction of species, art's potential to save or destroy the world, obsession, lust, and much more. But perhaps more than anything else, it is about how impossible it is for anything living to be entirely, absolutely individual and independent.