Rounding up to 3 🌟


It's me, I think I'm the problem.


I wish I'd loved this book as much as other reviewers had.
I see snatches of what they're talking about.
I enjoyed the whimsical, the amusing, the characters, but for me, they were buried in too much other stuff. I was not so keen on the other stuff.
Just never a story I rushed back to.

What a weirdly wonderful and wonderfully weird book. I loved reading this original book. The wry and colourful observations of life, friendship and the landscape were so beautiful and resonated so strongly with me. The story made me laugh and made me sad and I just loved all the characters. And oh what a beautiful ending. This is the sort of book that stays with you and you just want to keep going back to it.

What a book, I have taken 24 hours to gather my thoughts before writing this review. In places the book was so familiar to my own experiences & resonated with me very strongly & yet in other ways was so very different…

It is the story of the life of Eric, Carl & the friends they collect along the way. Carl however just so happens to be a dog, a very intelligent & articulate dog at that. This slightly fantastical element is gently handled & really this is just about their friendship as they share their stories & musings on life with each other.

The reflections on male friendships & the relationship with the folklore & rural politics of their countryside setting are deftly told with real warmth, joy, humour & sharp wit. I already know this book will stay with me well beyond its first reading & I will certainly be searching out for more books from Tom Cox

Thoroughly enjoyable

I requested this on a whim and let me just tell you. What a sweet little triumph it was! I don't want to spoil a thing, but please if you're considering it READ THIS BOOK! What a treat and what an homage to humanity.

An ode to eclecticism and honest passion, Tom Cox’s Everything Will Swallow You follows its dual protagonists, Eric and Carl as they go about their lives in South-West England. Eric collects records and antiques, while Carl is an avid reader and gardener. Those whom they meet on their regular walks take Eric (correctly) to be a 67 year old man and Carl (incorrectly) to be a dog.

Cox’s novel is fresh and insightful in its exploration of friendship and community, illustrating the unexpectedly colourful lives that we can share in if only we payed a little bit more attention. This philosophy extends into the characterisation which is compelling in its simultaneous rejection and elevation of the mundane. (I shan’t spoil anything, but Carl is my very favourite Carl). The use of different narrative perspectives throughout is effective, along with the variation in written form (eg. letters and journal articles).

Cox’s focus on the temporal is also fascinating. References to a future cataclysmic societal shift go hand-in-hand with a consistent harking back to the mythology of the landscape. This helps to situate the narrative as something both ephemeral and eternal. In a way, this is the message of the novel; not to forget that there are lots of other heres and nows, but to remember that only one is here and now.

Woven like so much twisted gold and brambles, Everything Will Swallow You is a book I imagine I shall be returning to return to time and time again.

As someone who has spent a lot of their time being the wallflower - observing, making up stories about what the people I have observed do in the safety of their own homes : I found this book to be a silent acknowledgement of my younger self.
An interesting remise definitely, with a very unexpected start.
This is the sort of book you would want to pick up one last afternoon between seasons thinking it would be a decent companion for a few hours and then you get sucked in .

I really enjoyed this book. It teaches the age old adage that we should up d never judge a book by its cover even though we so often do. This is a great refresher

Tom Cox does a fantastic job in writing this book, it had that element that I was looking for and enjoyed the overall feel from the description. The characters were everything that I was looking for and was glad I got to read this.