Villager by Tom Cox

This book is one that I won in a competition and promised the author I would review. The problem I had when thinking about this review was where to start! It is unlike any other book I’ve ever read, and a traditional review involving the plot and various events would not do justice to the book. What I have decided to do is to reflect the elements that made it so involving and I hope that it might encourage some of you to give this marvellous book a try.

The main character

In this book, the main character is the village of Underhill itself. It is where the action of the novel takes place and it is on a number of occasions the narrator and reflector of the story. Yes, the village talks to you at various points. Yes, it is slightly disconcerting at first, but very soon you just accept it and start to be drawn into the story. The village reflects on the progress, mostly negative, that has been brought about by the human beings that live on it. It describes the pain of pylons being driven into it and the way that the wildlife that ran free before human settlements arrived. There is an air of wistful regret, but there is also an engaging sense of humour and an ability to take a very long term view as befits the Earth itself. You get the impression that, despite itself at times, the village does care about its human residents and wishes it could intervene in their more damaging and short sighted activities. By being outside time as well as within it, it puts a lot of the action into context.

The stories

As well as choosing the village itself as the narrator, Tom Cox, decides to forgo a traditional narrative structure. There are not just flashbacks, but looks into the distant future. Characters appear, disappear, reappear and are reflected upon by their distant relatives both past and future. In less capable hands this could have been an annoying conceit, but here the delight of the novel for the reader is the detective work where you come across a clue to a story thread that was left hanging, and find out what actually happened. I lost count of the amount of times I smiled when a character reappeared or was mentioned and background was filled in. A lot of the stories have, somewhere in their narrative, the reclusive American singer/songwriter RJ McKendree who came to the village towards the end of the 60s and recorded an album of songs called Wallflower. He was captivated by village life and the album reflected this, in terms of the material and the style. However, the album is ‘lost’ for various reasons and becomes almost mythical as does McKendree himself. He does reappear in the village, almost as a ghost, or a legend, though still very much real and alive. One of my favourite details is that a single from the album was released, but only in Hungary, and due to its rarity it fetches £400 on eBay! When McKendree’s biographer appears later we read extracts from the rough copy of his book and a number of gaps are filled in, much to the reader’s delight.

The descriptions

Here is where the book really excels. The descriptions of the village, the environment around it and the interaction it has with the other characters is often breath-taking in its poetry and just as often unsparing in its details of the more unpleasant aspects, particularly those of its human residents.. I could see, feel, smell, hear and taste some of the writing. It is rare indeed to read a novel that is so immersive and so detailed, where the descriptions are absolutely integral to the story. If the village wasn’t so well realised, you would not care about its story quite so much. The insights into the lives of the villagers themselves come through with real power and authenticity and you can see the hedgerows, the fields, the river and the hills almost as if you are taking a stroll through Underhill. It is an utterly immersive experience that captivated me from the first page and never let up.

The reflection

I hope I have given a flavour of this book with this review and I hope you decide to give this a go, because it may well beguile you as it did me. My main advice is to lose yourself in the writing, much as you would when taking a walk around an unfamiliar place, but to look out for those incidents that give you some signposts leading you through the novel. I left this novel after the last page feeling completely satisfied and determined to return to Underhill again in the future. The only thing we need now is the soundtrack of Wallflower itself by the reclusive RJ McKendree!