Villager by Tom Cox

Villager is a ramble through the history of a village at the foot of a tor. Hares and wild ponies, a stone circle and a church are on the map. Crows circle the crown of the hill. Mystical voices from distant eras comment on the doings of the living. At times the past of the village orbits eerily close to its present, with startling results. I loved ‘Message Board (2012)’, in which a member of the Beaker tribe who lived in Underhill during the Bronze Age appears to join a WhatsApp chat. Some of the stories have a ‘coming-of-age’ feel. Cox shows how young people fail to appreciate days they will look back on as the best of their lives. Other tales focus on relationships between loners, which scrape the surface of friendship but never reach the core. The passages about rivers are stunning. Cox writes brilliantly about the power of moving water.

The arts are important to the structure of Villager. It opens with a painting and ends with an exploration of the life of a semi-mythical folk singer. The time line is eclectic, with episodes set at different times between 1932 and 2099. The underlying narrative of these episodes is expressed by the tor itself in the sections labelled ‘Me’, which are written in first person and present tense. By personifying the tor and giving it a human voice, Cox expresses some intriguing ideas about time and the earth. ‘I desire love,’ says the tor. ‘I want to see it thrive. But I also want blood.’

In March 21, I reviewed Tom Cox’s previous book, Notebook. I described this collection of jottings as a funny and perceptive examination of the absurdities of everyday life. Cox has moved on from casually observing the world around him to a deeper and darker analysis. Villager is equally as satirical and engaging as Notebook, but there is an increased awareness of ancient wisdom. The author explores links between the experiences of people who lived in Devon thousands of years ago and modern day villagers. The strongest of these links between the generations is the land itself.

I recommend Villager to fans of folk music, lovers of Dartmoor and readers of witty short stories.