2022/69: Villager -- Tom Cox

I feel it all getting under the cotton and passing through me -- the sun, the butterflies, the maybugs, the tune of the water, the breeze, the falling light -- and I am the moment and nothing more. [p. 231]

I helped to crowdfund this book, Cox's first novel, and I feel suitably rewarded by getting to read it! The narrative takes the form of interconnected stories set in a fictional Dartmoor-ish village, Underhill. Each chapter is headed by a title and a date ('Search Engine (2099)'; 'Billywitch (1932)') and the framing voice, the 'Me (Now)' is, well, the hill itself, Underhill Tor. (Echoes of The Raven Tower here, with its geological narrator...)

Anyone who reads Tom Cox's social media will find some elements of Villager familiar: the rush of the rising river outside the window, the conversations with cows, the cold-water swimming, and of course the folk music. If Villager can be said to have a single underlying plot, it's probably the story of folk singer R J McKendree, who first visits the village in the late 1960s and finds inspiration, not least in a local folk song called 'Little Meg', which he hears sung by an old man in the village pub. McKendree will return to Underhill decades later: meanwhile, his recording of 'Little Meg' will become a cult classic, only available as a Hungarian vinyl pressing.

And of course there's Little Meg herself, who appears (I think) at several points in the novel, including on a village chat group where she talks about her favourite goose. She's been around a while... Villager is fascinating, and fascinated -- by archaeology, folklore, music, merganser ducks, weather, changing skies and the layers of village life. There are echoes between the people living in the same house at different times, and some distinctly science-fictional elements (I especially liked the search engine).

This is a book that makes me want to return to Devon, to spend days walking the narrow lanes, swimming in the sea, climbing through granite boulders and ruined villages on the moor. It also, more achievably, makes me want to be outside in nature. But oh, to be in Devon in the summertime, with the green hill rising above the beach, and wild strawberries on the dusty verge. (And, all right, the rain.)