Best of 2021: The Kilphouca Stories

This week Nation.Cymru are counting out the year by revisiting our highlights of 2021.

In August we featured readings from the Kilphouca stories: extracts from a collection of short stories in development, written by Brian Mantonset and set in a fictional Irish town which has been gripped by mass hysteria—a hallucinatory contamination in the whiskey during a local festival.

Here are all five of those stories to enjoy to enjoy in one sitting.

“That one man could forever change the nature of the town, would put forevermore a murmur in its soft heartbeat, was never expected.”

“Jolene sat low, well below the cloud of enthusiasm and safe from infection. She was reeling from the sudden conclusion of a thing with a thick tongued liar.”

“The conspiring mishaps. The signs of deeper attrition. The unwillingness of the house to be a house, to be lived in.”

“That fresh breeze in off the peat bog was Godly and all, but it never held her in the same reverie that small, ordinary, often mass-produced things did.”

“A dark origin at the heart of Kilphouca.”

Caitlin’s story will continue…

If you would like to be notified about new stories of the its beleaguered townspeople of Kilphouca, you can sign up to Brian’s mailing list here.

Brian Manton is an Irish writer based in Swansea, Wales.
The stories were recorded and mastered by Adam Howell.
Images, text and audio copyright © 2021 Brian Manton.