21st Century Yokel

21st Century Yokel by Cox, Tom. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781783524563.

21st-Century Yokel explores the way we can be tied inescapably to landscape, whether we like it or not, often through our family and our past. Its not quite a nature book, not quite a humor book, not quite a family memoir, not quite folklore, not quite social history, not quite a collection of essays, but a bit of all seven. It contains owls, badgers, ponies, beavers, otters, bats, bees, scarecrows, dogs, ghosts, Toms loud and excitable dad and, yes, even a few cats. Its full of Devons local folklore—the ancient kind, and the everyday kind—and provincial places and small things. But what emerges from this focus on the small are themes that are broader and bigger and more definitive. The books language is colloquial and easy and its 11 chapters are discursive and wide-ranging, rambling even. The feel of the book has a lot in common with the country walks Tom Cox was on when he composed much of it—its bewitched by fresh air, intrepid in minor ways, haunted by weather and old stories and the spooky edges of the outdoors, restless, sometimes foolish, and prone to a few detours . . . but it always reaches its intended destination. The book is illustrated with Toms own landscape photographs and linocuts by his mother.