Quilt

In the village of Kilinver, stories do not unfold in straight lines, but rather weave, loop and return, stitching together lives across generations. At the heart of Quilt lies a quiet but relentless force, and her name is Nell Burrows, whose lifelong resentment of poet Pete Crotty slowly evolves into a story of revenge.

With inventive, expansive prose encompassing local gossip, poetry, religion, tradition and Irish mythology, Tony Guerin brings to life the rich complexities beneath respectable small-town existence. Beneath the piety and restraint of the era lies a world shaped by secrecy, longing and the enduring influence of Catholic Ireland.

What first appears to be a patchwork of stories gradually reveals itself as something far more deliberate: a dark, compelling tapestry of revenge, memory and the unspoken truths woven through a changing Ireland.

A melody of varying colours and shades of diamonds, some stitched with threads of gold, others with barbed wire.

— Christine Dwyer Hickey

Quilt is a festival of fact and fiction where even the deck of generations has been well and truly shuffled. Fantasies fantastic!
— Cyril Kelly

Within these covers we have Oberon to QC Hanna’s Inner Temple, St Patrick to Gimp-The-First, Pete Crotty to Nell Burrows and her collop-and-Southern-tyre-biting-Kerry Blues, Moon-Man to Tony Nally, Father Ferris to Nostradamus, Lena Ash to her arch nemesis Shed’s Shaver-Fox-Duggan, Spancil Hill to Valparaiso, Poc Fada Willie McGee to Mozambique-Bishop-Uncle, Guard Branno to Crowe and those are only for starters.
— Patrick Bergin