The Quail Who Wears The Shirt

by Jeremy T. Wilson

Tuesday night is trivia night, a night for produce market owner Lee Hubbs to swing by the bar with his cop friend, a night to down a few shots and avoid all the folks who’ve mysteriously been turning into quails. It’s a night to kick back and maybe get some action on the side from his employee/girlfriend before heading home to his wife and kids.

But this Tuesday’s different. An argument with the girlfriend, a little unintentional vehicular homicide of an unsuspecting cyclist, and the next thing you know, Lee’s life’s upended like a bushel of rotten peaches. Well, mostly upended. Because when you’re a fine upstanding citizen, and your victim is a quail-human ne’er-do-well who won’t be missed by society, who’s to say what’s right, really?

Jeremy T. Wilson’s The Quail Who Wears the Shirt is a magnificent Southern-fried meditation on guilt and karma, a fantastic and truly memorable work about the lies we tell ourselves and the truths that seep through despite our best efforts, a darkly comedic satire as strange and surreal as an onion pie.

Genres: Fiction

263 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 7, 2023

About the author

Jeremy T. Wilson is a former winner of the Chicago Tribune's Nelson Algren Award for short fiction. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in literary magazines such as The Carolina Quarterly, The Florida Review, Hobart, Sonora Review, Third Coast and other publications. He holds an MFA from Northwestern University and teaches creative writing at The Chicago High School for the Arts. He lives in Evanston, Illinois with his wife and daughter.

Reviews

[Stephanie (aka WW) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m thrilled to be one of the first to review The Quail Who Wears the Shirt. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, a novel about the upended life of Lee Hubbs, owner of a road-side peach/onion/etc. produce business in rural Georgia. Lee is living a fairly normal life, with a wife and two kids and a girlfriend on the side, when one night on his way home he hits a quail on a bike, killing him. Yes, I said “quail”, because in Lee’s world, some people have been mysteriously turning into quails. Their bodies remain human, while their heads turn quail-like, with colorful plumage sprouting upward. These quails, like many “other” members of society, are treated like lower-class citizens and discriminated against. Lee doesn’t report his incident, instead hoping that the death of one (lowly) quail will be overlooked. However, his guilt leads him to become obsessed with finding out more about the quail and this obsession leads him far astray from his normal life.

This is a story of instant karma, as Lee’s wife and kids mysteriously disappear overnight after the accident, and Lee is left with the increasingly difficult task of chasing down a relative of the deceased quail, for whom he carries an onion pie. Apparently, onion pie is a famously craved product of Lee’s roadside business and the onion pie that Lee carries is representative of his guilt.

I have read other stories recently involving strange human derivations, like Shark Heart, a book in which people morph fully into animals over time. The Quail Who Wears the Shirt is well done, never veering so far into its strangeness as to ruin the story arc. I loved the character of Lee Hubbs and sweated with him as he got into ever-further trouble on his quest. I also loved the existence of the quails as a stand-in for a lower class of society. This book is one of black comedy and satire and it totally worked for me.

On the back (of the shirt) was a picture of an eagle with a giant snake in its talons, a snake three times the size of the eagle.
“I don’t believe in tattoos,” Valentine said. “But if I was to get one, it’d be this.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because. Even if you’re a bad motherfucker, there’s always something badder.”
“So what’s badder than the eagle?”
“The quail who wears the shirt,” he said

Thanks to Edelweiss and Tortoise Books for allowing me to review this e-ARC.

[Ashlee · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.8

[Rachel Swearingen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeremy Wilson’s delightfully imaginative The Quail Who Wears the Shirt is part redemption tale and part funeral for white Southern masculinity. Entertaining, and at times disturbing, The Quail delivers one hilarious scene after another. Lee Hubbs, for all his misdeeds, managed to win me over, in no small part because of Wilson’s exuberant prose, deft characterization, and comic timing. Wilson brings the absurd and the mundane together, driving the story towards a finale you won’t want to miss.

[Virginia Brackett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the more skillfully-written and funny novels I've read in a while, and it is absolutely on my list. The fantasy element, which is that some people are quails, seamlessly blends into a realistic plot in which the male narrator is prompted by a hit-and-run accident to learn more about its victim, a quail, but also a member of the Allman band, among additional humorous identities. Valentine, as he is commonly known, appears in the novel for a short time prior to his death, but affects the narrator for a lifetime. The narrator eventually reaches an epiphany as he slowly turns into a quail himself, via a self-inflicted wound. This change accompanies others in his life, the most important of which is his wife leaving him because he's been unfaithful. He must reconstruct his identity as part of a group he's never truly understood and experiences a literal baptism into a new life. The additional characters are well drawn and interesting - none are stereotyped. Book groups should enjoy a strong discussion over the symbolism of the quail community, for which one can basically substitute any marginalized group. Other topics include family stability, self-image, changes in life, and the smaller communities that we should all treasure.

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part Southern Gothic, part satire with a lot of humor, a lot of heart, and maybe a sprinkle of Coen Brothers sensibility, this is a must read.

Wilson gives us a protagonist who is a character study in whiteness and toxic masculinity, the kind of guy who populates so much of the South and the Midwest, who we want to (and should judge), but who we also can't help but empathize with and even root for at times (mostly hoping he might finally learn something). This is thanks to the complexity Wilson gives Lee Hubbs, so that he's not just a stereotype or a caricature, but a character who allows Wilson to explore rich themes of identity and race in meaningful way.

Wilson's ear for dialog and his sense of character populates the world of this book with so many memorable characters, who, even if they disappear after a chapter, feel like fully fleshed human beings.

I don't want to spoil any of the plot, so just get out there and pick up a copy for yourself.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is fascinating, but in a 20 page dose-at-a-time kind of way. It's brilliant, manic, brazen, and bizarre. The writing is so descriptive that I saw every scene in full color, and understood the complexities of every character within the span of a single line of dialogue. It was breathtakingly sharp and witty. I'd give it 5 stars for writing style, but the plot itself wasn't very compelling for me (3 territory), so averaging to a 4. I am really glad I picked this up at the library and recommend it to anyone who wants a breath of fresh air from the major publishing machine. I haven't read thousands of books, but of the ones I have read I would say that between the absurdity and the sharp writing style, it reminds me a bit of Haruki Murakami's Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World, which I also loved!

[David Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Wilson’s imagined Southern world, some people have turned into quails, there’s a plague of ladybugs, and a certain pinball machine holds more answers than any church ever could. Read it for the story. Read it for the satire. Read it especially for Wilson’s writing. He’s a genius of word choice and comic phrasing. I love this book!

[Dirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellently weird book, sharply written, and full of great characters. I will tell you that the movie "Oh Brother where Art Thou" was inspired by this -- they share the relatable anti-hero, a knack for observing people, dark humor, and situations that may at any point veer between the real, the hallucinatory, and a fable. Of course that isn't true, but it is a fitting and just compliment.

[Andy Mozina · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a lot to love about this book, but I'll focus on how well-drawn the main character was. A great mix of decency, flaws, curmudgeonishness, angle of vision, and many funny observations. I enjoyed every sentence.

[Mary Katherine Hutchinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fantastic read!! Full of memorable characters well developed by Wilson. He creates a world that is funny, suspenseful, mystic, and so charismatic. Once the story began I devoured it. Such imagination and originality. Not to be forgotten.

[Heather Liebler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Funny, smart writing. Super fresh

[Lisa Heinsohn · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unusual and thought provoking story about society and also the messiness of life