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    Clay's Quilt
    Clay's Quilt
    Clay's Quilt
    Audiobook8 hours

    Clay's Quilt

    Written by Silas House

    Narrated by Tom Stechschulte

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Clay's Quilt was a Book Sense 76 Pick and was nominated for the Southeastern Booksellers Book of the Year and the Appalachian Writers Association Book Award. Clay Sizemore loves his home in Free Creek, but he longs for more. Since the death of his mother when he was four, he has felt the absence of family. His father left, and he has no siblings. But finally, through the love of others, he is able to create a place of his own.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateApr 8, 2011
    ISBN9781456122454
    Clay's Quilt
    Author

    Silas House

    Silas House is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels, one book of creative nonfiction, and three plays. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Advocate, Time, Garden & Gun, and other publications. A former commentator for NPR's All Things Considered, House is the winner of the Nautilus Award, the Storylines Prize from the NAV/New York Public Library, an E. B. White Honor, and many other awards.

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    Reviews for Clay's Quilt

    4/5

    137 ratings12 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Beautiful! Highly recommend. I slowed the playback down to enhance the narrator’s drawl.
    • 4/5
      Part coming-of-age story and part paean to Appalachia, this impressive first novel tells the story of Clay Sizemore, orphaned in a violent act that has left its scars throughout his extended family.House, who is in fact an Appalachian native, has a keen ear for dialogue and a gift for creating characters who come to life on the page. He treads a fine line through the practices of the Pentecostal church, which influences virtually everyone in the book, whether they are practitioners or not. And the music of the region is practically a character in its own right.If there's a flaw here, it's that there's not a lot of internal tension. The characters go along in their day-to-day lives and even the underlying love story unfolds without a lot of high drama. The few violent confrontations, driven by alcohol, drugs, and jealousy erupt, play out, and mostly disappear quickly, even though they drive much of the plot.The quilt metaphor is handled nicely, but so subtly that if it wasn't played up in the title, it might have gone largely unnoticed.I doubt this book is going to change anyone's life, but it's a nice read and would make a good book club selection.
    • 4/5
      Clay's Quilt is set in the mountains of eastern Kentucky in the late 20th century. Its people are bound tightly to land, church and family even when they have left the church and families have been fractured by drugs, death and dysfunction. For many of them, this bond is both precious and perilous, a tie that can be loosened, but never cut. At the age of four, Clay Sizemore survived the drunken rampage in which his father killed his mother and two other people. Although his memory of the event is fragmentary, it is embedded in his adult psyche, leaving him with a longing for his mother and an aversion to violence uncommon among his generation in that time and place. Clay voluntarily embraces the life of his community, going to work in the coal mines, spending his weekends drinking and dancing in the local honkytonk with his best friend Cake and walking the mountains he loves so deeply. He yearns for something more, but it is not a yearning that draws him away from his heritage. He wants to keep the celebratory life-affirming best of it without giving in to the destructive tendencies that are whittling away at so many of his contemporaries. Nature, love and music permeate this novel, and if there are any more honestly drawn characters anywhere in literature, I want to meet them. This is the author's first novel, although you will find it listed as No. 3 in his Appalachian trilogy, because chronologically this story comes last in the series.
    • 4/5
      Clay's quilt by Silas HouseClay lost his mother to the attack and now works in the coal mine. He has many aunts that help as he's only 4 years old. He watches his uncle make quilts as he grows up and how he puts the pieces together that tell his story.As he gets older he moves closer to the mine, where he works and is given his mother's memory box.
    • 5/5
      A wonderful story set in Appalachia. Clay, a coal miner, lost his mother when he was quite young but grows up in the heart of his family. The story starts with Clay as an adult, searching but not really understanding what he needs. The journey is deftly told, the characters achingly true. The author does a masterful job portraying a sense of place and culture, with love and respect. I loved the characters and would enjoy reading about them again. Thanks, House, for a lovely piece of work.
    • 3/5
      This is a nice little novel about a coal miner and his gradual attainment of self-knowledge and love. Clay Sizemore’s mother was killed when he was four, and as an adult, Clay starts to piece together his mother’s story, as he falls in love with a fiddle player with a troubled past of her own.The story itself is very slight, but the prose is graceful and the setting lovely. It’s a refreshingly unsentimental portrait of Appalachia, with an interesting mixture of ecstatic Pentecostalism, alcohol, violence and sex. I was prepared to be let down with a dramatic arc that is fairly flat, but the author closes the deal with a final paragraph that makes you go ahhh.
    • 2/5
      Good contemporary novel set in Kentucky; very likeable characters.
    • 4/5
      Orphaned at age 4, Clay Sizemore is raised in a small Appalachian mining town surrounded by family-some related and some not. Over the years he is still seeking the missing pieces of his memory of his mother. Life in modern day Kentucky, filled with laughter, sadness, anger, and love. This book paints a rich picture of time and place.
    • 4/5
      Overall, a wonderful modern appreciation of the Appalachian region and its ever-evolving culture. House writes convincingly and the characters seem to act out of their own free will, a gift many writers struggle to achieve in their work. There are only very minor issues with the book, stemming from some problems with predictability and cliche. This is especially evident in the ending, most specifically in the discovery of a quilt which has been made from Clay's mother, Anneth's, clothes. While this is a heartfelt moment and the reader can feel Clay's overwhelming emotion, the idea itself seems a bit contrived. But this is a minor detail when compared to the overall picture of what Silas House has done with the characters and setting in this novel!
    • 5/5
      This book is by a Southern storyteller who brings his characters to life. Having gone to school and traveled in the Appalachians, I loved reading a story that captures the voices and the region so well.
    • 5/5
      This book got me hooked on Silas House. Growing up in Kentucky, it was so easy for me to relate to the story and the characters in this book. Even the mention of UK basketball, I had to chuckle with that one.
    • 5/5
      Silas house is one of my favorite authors. Every time I go in a book store I go to the H's to see if he has a new book out. I loved this series of books about Clay and his family. After finishing this book and its sister books, I missed the characters as if they were my own family. They seem to walk off the pages of the book into your life while you read about them. I found myself laughing and crying with them and getting mad at their ememies. Well worth the read!