Villager

This is a green gift of a book. I love Cox’s nature writing in particular and struggle with his short stories because he is a writer of depth and breadth and short stories don’t do that justice. I was apprehensive approaching this book for that reason. He has the patience and the talent for the long haul and this book shows that in the beautifully written descriptions, particularly of Dartmoor. I felt immersed in the greenness of Dartmoor it reminded me of a time I was invited by a friend to a Wiccan ceremony, I can’t even remember which one, but a summer one, I left that night feeling connected to time out of ages as if it was all one and it came home with me, that deep connection. This is the feeling I was left with after reading this book. This book that deepened with every successive chapter. If I have a reservation it’s that the beginning was thinner, it would have been nice to have the same depth rewritten at the start, likewise the narrative voice. In the early chapters it bothered me inordinately that I didn’t know who was speaking and that, in part, distracted me from the words themselves. I also feared being excluded from the book by the musical references as I’m not big on music except radio 3 in the car. However, I am big on creativity and that is essentially what the music in this represents, how we and the world create and are changed by what we do, the almost painful reflections on why some of us ‘make it’ and others do not and does that make the creating any the less valid? Thoughts I’ve been pondering over for a very long time and given voice to here. Thanks to Tom Cox for this very thought provoking and feeling book.

Not read this author before, probably will not dip into his other works. Well worked, but a bit off the wall.Not mainstream, probably goes down well with a niche following.

This book is unlike Tom Cox's previous books and no less brilliant. I love the shifts in time, but never in place, and between characters, human and otherwise. His sense of humour always hits the spot.

Excellent book, often extremely funny. I particularly enjoy the juxtaposition of the mundane and the magic. Particularly loved the online village bulletin board part.. I'll read it again in a couple of months. Keep writing, Tom, your books are unique.

Really tried to get into this book but struggled with the disjointed plotting and lack of a coherent theme. Amusing in places which kept me engaged longer than it should. Just wanted my life back eventually and gave up on it half way through. Probably a fine work but it didn't work for me.

Brilliant, funny almost ingenious read!!!waiting for the next one@!!!@

I have read about just over 100 pages and gives up on this book, I cannot make any sense of it, but that might just be me.

The multi-layered story in Villager sprawls over time and place, slipping through the margins and brushing up against its own past and future. At its heart is a collection of songs written by an itinerant musician, and one ancient song in particular that echoes through the narrative, touching the lives of the characters in different ways.The intersecting stories are narrated by an ancient moorland earth spirit, a coiled force who isn't best pleased with how humanity is abusing the planet. In a novel that spans the prehistoric era to the not so distant future, there is folklore, Bildungsroman, speculative fiction, diary writing and cultural reference points that span Mary Oliver, Mike Leigh, Oliver Postgate and Public Enemy.For readers who like to compare an unfamiliar author with other writers they might have read, Villager will appeal to fans of David Mitchell, and particularly his novel Black Swan Green, in the way it crosses time and moves characters from the centre of their own story to the edges of other people’s narratives, and in the way music is so important to the story. I’d also draw similarities with the hard edged whimsy of Magnus Mills, where the conventions of life gloss over something dark and rugged, and we are encouraged to look at our own lives more forensically. The big difference between Cox and Mills, though, is that Mills writes about the entrapment of life, while Cox has his characters burst out of convention into the less stable freedom of doing their own thing.The layers in this novel captivated me. Not just the layers within its own story, but the layers across our reality, too. I found myself immersed in it, unwilling to stop reading and, when I did stop, emerging into my personal present as though from a dream. I love it when books grab me like that. When they feel real, but at the same time you know there’s something unreal about where they place you. There’s such richness to the plot in Villager, that I feel sure I’ll be back for another visit to focus on a different set of crannies and connections.