In the first few chapters of Everything Will Swallow You is a mysterious detail that leaves you quizzical and delightedly wondering. It draws you magically into Tom Cox’s story, and all is gradually and delicately revealed. However, the blurb on the back of the book names this subtle thread of mystery with its functional, marketing words. This encapsulates something of one of the themes of Tom Cox’s wonderful novel.
The book focuses on Eric, a man in his 60s. He buys and sells antiques, old books and primarily old LPs. He sells “small slices of history”.
His love of music and the way it contains the past is lovingly and often hilariously presented. We get to join him at house clearances, car-boot sales and markets.
Materially insecure, he finds his home in people. Cox creates a rich, loving portrait.
Later in life he befriends Carl and their friendship is deep and loving. The book also features a warm web of Eric’s friends, relations – dead and living, great grandparents and ex-partners.
The narrative weaves back and forward through Eric’s life. The book’s theme of time makes the present tense, in the past, deeply resonant. The year is often only disclosed well into the particular piece, creating a sense of being unmoored from time. As does the sudden insertion of some knowledge of a future event, “a lovely community-orientated bookshop seller that would close in a few years to make way for a less community-orientated seller of electronic cigarettes”.
The book creates a sense that all times exist at once: “a small quiet Eric who, although absent for half a century ... never ceased to exist as an adjunct to himself”. The present is seen as an accumulation of the past – decades and centuries. This is mirrored in the sedimentary landscape – the Jurassic coast of Dorset and Devon as well as Cornwall, where Eric and Carl go on endless walks that bring us close to their feel for this unique landscape. They visit derelict buildings, abbeys and rock formations – layers of folklore, myth and local history exist as tangibly as the regular mist and rain.
This is a richly textured book, with elements of magic realism; it celebrates the relationships that warm us in this flicker in eternity we call life. It’s a funny and inventive book with the most beautiful heartbreaking ending.
