Clay's Quilt (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

This is a hard story to review. It was hard for me to get into, but once I got into it I just kept on reading because I was totally invested in the people. I felt as if I knew them. I am not altogether certain what the point of this was other than to instill the importance of close family ties and close community ties. I would say the title pretty well summed this novel up. It was a patchwork quilt of different characters, different life-styles, different values but all tied together in family and a community set back in a holler deep in the Kentucky hills, and Clay and his search for meaning after the loss of his Mother when he was only 4 years old. It all came together for him. I have another to read by this author and I am actually looking forward to the read.

As I went back over my list of books I read last year (2001), I found that I had read over 35 novels. There were the ones I had highly anticipated (the new Robert Morgan, the latest Sue Grafton), the ones that got so much hype that I thought I should buy a copy (THE CORRECTIONS), and the ones which had been recommended to me by friends whom I knew to be good, trustworthy readers. One friend would not shut up until I read PEACE LIKE A RIVER, and I have to admit that it was a beautiful novel. But another friend was adamant that I read this debut novel, CLAY'S QUILT, and now I realize that it was the the best surprise of the year, and my favorite book of 2001. House paints his world in subtle strokes--I was endeared to the characters before I ever realized that they had began to take hold of me. I was lost in the world that this book presents...after reading it I looked all over a map of Kentucky to find a place called Free Creek, but found no evidence of its existence. If I had, I would have probably set out to tour this beautiful little town. Still, I feel as if I have been there. I feel as if I know the people in this book. I am not usually the kind of reader that lets a book take hold of me in such a way, but I don't see how anyone could refuse the very real and raw power of CLAY'S QUILT. Absolutely beautiful.

Vividly poetic in its description of Appalachian natural resources, heartwarming and honest in its portrayal of people linked by their love for their environs and family, Clay's Quilt is in the top three on my "re-read often" list. In this debut novel, Silas House deftly stitches a search for understanding and love with picturesque Appalachia. Clay Sizemore is a character any reader will quickly befriend, not only because of the tragedy of losing his mother, but because Clay is a loveable young man. House's prose places the reader, like a close friend, beside Clay. Whether Clay is at work in the coal mine, walking the mountainside, or partying at the local honky-tonk, we are there with him, feeling the grit of coal dust in our eyes, smelling the air on Free Mountain, or throwing down a whiskey with a beer chaser on a Saturday night. There is something to be said when a reader can feel for a story's rogues. Even the villains and the socially challenged characters in Clay's Quilt are people with whom a reader will identify. House takes us into their hearts, to the places that hurt, to those hidden areas where malice and evil ferment, torment and eventually explode with terrible consequences. Life, human and natural, pulsates through the veins of this story. Long after its first reading, "Clay's Quilt" will warm the reader.

Clay's Quilt is a powerful novel lovingly and masterfully pieced from the lives of the residents of Free Creek, Kentucky. Whether working, playing, laughing, praying, driving, crying, singing, fighting, dancing, hollering, or loving, these people do it passionately and with every fiber of their beings; these people LIVE. As a result, the novel itself lives and breathes and makes a joyful noise through the voices of its people as well as through their music. House's prose is lyrical yet unsentimental, fiercely grounded in real, concrete, sensuous and intimate details of everyday life. As the novel follows Clay Sizemore's struggle to find his place in the world and to make peace with a tragic past, we witness his tender and ferocious love for family and friends, his awe and gratitude at finally finding true love with a fiddle player named Alma, and his determination to make a home and a life for himself and his new family. House's voice is true and Clay's Quilt is a book both joyous and haunting, a story whose characters stayed with me long after I finished reading.

I just finished reading Clay's Quilt and I loved it. I would recommend this book to anyone. It pulled me in and made me feel like I knew these characters like they were people I saw and talked to everyday. Living in the area that this book is based on I am really proud to say this book captures the true essence of Kentucky, the family ties, the things they do. Just to wrap it all up I would have to say this is one of my favorite books of all time and once again I would recommend this book to everyone. Read it I promise you will love it to!!