Villager by Tom Cox

A dark, sometimes funny, haunting novel of music and nature set on Dartmoor

This novel had been on my To Read list for months when I won a copy from the author in a giveaway at the start of March. I read it within a couple of weeks, which is fast for me these days, and loved it.

Set in a fictional village on the edge of Dartmoor, Villager is deeply rooted in its setting — there is a hand-drawn map, for those (like me) who like that sort of thing. The weather, the moods of the moor, mist and damp and the sound of the river pervade the narrative. In terms of overarching story, a man makes a beautiful but mostly-forgotten folk album while staying in the village in the 1960s. He and his music transform several people’s lives.

However, the twelve chapters range from 1932 to 2099 in their setting, though they are not offered in chronological order. Some are narrated by the spirit of the moor, crabby and watchful, others by assorted villagers of different ages and dispositions. There are diary entries, online message boards, excerpts from a work-in-progress biography, as well as chapters that you might call a traditional novel chapter format (first or third person stories following the events befalling one or two people over a relatively short period).

There is irreverence and humour, beautiful nature-writing, unsettling echoes down the ages, ecological destruction, young love, old love, missed opportunities and an air of melancholy. I finished the book aching with the loss of something that was never mine.

One person’s nonlinear novel is often another person’s collection of linked short stories, and maybe because I am rooted in the short story world I thought of it more as the latter to begin with. Later chapters, however, only make sense because you’ve read this far and know who or what is being referred to. Extra connections form and loop back, and you slot earlier parts into place, immediately wanting to re-read it all to gain a deeper understanding of the whole.

I don’t think this is the sort of book anyone will read, then shrug and pronounce it ‘ok but not really my thing’. It will either chime within you and take over your imagination for the time you’re reading it (and a while afterwards) or it will leave you cold. I don’t mean that in an in-crowd kind of way, like you’ll either get it or you’re just not destined to be in the gang, I mean the way the layers of story build up and the way it’s written, it will either immerse you or you’re immune to its pull.

For the full immersive experience you can also listen to the cult 1960s album that twines through the narrative. Obviously not the actual album, because that’s fictional, but Will Twynham has made a tie-in album that purports to be the legendary Wallflower by RJ McKendree and you can listen to it on bandcamp. I felt myself getting lost in the music and it did a great job of living up to the expectations I’d formed after reading various accounts of the album in the book.

I can’t remember where I learnt of the existence of Villager but the description mentioned music, nature and folklore, and used the word ‘psychedelic’. It could either be fabulous or a dog’s breakfast, as is always the way with something that sounds original, particularly by an author you don’t know (though I’ve since realised I’d read him years ago in The Guardian). Then I joined Substack, almost immediately ran across his publication The Villager and loved his style.

I should note there are fewer cats in the book than the Substack publication, though it is dedicated to his ‘most psychedelic cat’. I will also note here, as someone who’s bemoaned the lack of illustrations in adult fiction before, that there are nice illustrations at the start of each chapter.

To figure out whether you will love this book, read some of Tom Cox’s Substack posts and Notes. If you come away from them baffled and nonplussed, wondering what anyone sees in this nonsense, then I can safely say Villager is not for you. If, on the other hand, you (like me) find them by turns entertaining, mind-stretching, thought-provoking, poignant and delightfully offbeat and surreal, grab Villager with both hands and don’t let go.