It’s actually been a few weeks since I finished Nigel Cox’s truly remarkable final novel The Cowboy Dog, but my oh my – some novels do linger, Jean. (Old ad-line that only people of a certain age will remember unfortunately). It’s stayed on my mind, even chewing through the present full-on mental occupation occasioned by Damien Wilkins’ The Fainter, something Damien wouldn’t take from many other writers and be ok with, I’m sure. Phil Twyford, my boss at NZ Book Month has just come back from holiday having whipped through it in a couple of days and been ‘absolutely amazed’ by it. We agreed it was unclassifiable, like pretty much all of his previous work, but that’s just fine with me – it’s kind of unthinkable to try and give Nigel any kind of label.

Before I launch into my rant, I must just draw attention to yet another glorious cover by Sarah Maxey. How is it that every time, she gets it so right? It's art, pure and simple. Just perfect.

I said ages ago, when Sport 34 came out with an excerpt of Cowboy Dog, that it reminded me of Nick Cave’s book And The Ass Saw The Angel. I think it was mostly the language that made me recall that mad, bad story. Cowboy Dog is not fully phonetically written like Angel – apart from the odd ‘cain’t’ or ‘hongry’, or dropped ‘g’: runnin’, cryin’ – but it has a similar quaint, old-Testament, Southern-dialect feel to it. This choice of the narrator’s voice gives the book a kind of bible-belt, mad edge – think Deliverance, but move it a fair way west.

Because that’s what we’re dealing with here. An epic Western, set right here in New Zealand. Complete with a barren mountain, cactus, snakes and turtles. Yes, it’s weird, but like Tarzan Presley – and how weird was that – his calm, matter-of-factness has you accepting the weirdness very quickly, and settling into it like a big comfy armchair.

So Chester Farlowe, our young narrator, goes to Auckland after his Daddy is shot down on the mountain by the villainous Stronson. It’s a coming-of-age trip – via Huntly. How we laugh when Huntly hoves into view. Check this out:

We came to a place where tracks of iron crossed the black of the highway and, knowing these for what they were, I asked to be set down. ‘In Huntly?’ said the driver. ‘No one ever stops in Huntly unless they threw a rod.’

Arriving in Auckland footsore and on the edge of starvation, Chester meets a takeaway cart man who give him his name, Mr Dog, and saves his life with what I assumed at the time was cold speculation and definite creepiness. Apparently not, although strangely, I wasn’t convinced of Henry Stroud’s best intentions, even up to the end. But maybe that’s just Nigel illustrating that we need to give people the benefit of the doubt more and that given that, more will exhibit ‘a bottomless well of kindness’…?

Chester’s doubtful love-interest, Spoons – that ‘poor, disfigured thing’ – (I decided it was pointless to speculate on her name) is also ambiguous. She looks after the naïve country boy, sure, but also introduces him to drugs, bad company, petty theft and nasty sex. Fuelled with this potent mix, he heads back to the mountain to avenge his daddy’s death – and you just know there’s going to be a bloodbath at some point. Oh, and there is.

But first there are the pylons. Mind-bending power pylons that loom darkly across the land like, like – like the big huge hammers in Pink Floyd’s The Wall. That’s where the pylons took me. Huge, evil, surreal, mindless creatures on some kind of mission, marching, marching, and frying the brains of all who venture near. Oh, it’s all too much. Re-skimming it for my thumb-scratches and corner-folds (I'm afraid so), it’s all too much. What the hell is it all about? But then there’s more! In Part Four, Nigel tumbles and buffets you, you can’t believe what twists and turns he takes before laying you gently down in a pure sanctuary of odd companionship.

A final point of typical Cox deliciousness in this novel – the music. As in Tarzan Presley, he allows himself a window into his beloved music, this time through Henry Stroud’s parlour radio, and through the wind-up gramophone of the sly cook on the mountain:

From within the horn came a voice the like of which I had never heard. If the oldest tree which grows in the driest, meanest corner of this sorry ball of dirt was to utter a parched moan before finally sheddin’ it’s leaves it would not sound more heartsick, more will-broken, more lost and gone forever than Memphis Mama Deacon in her hour of revelation.

Oh I hates to have my feet
Settle on the floor
How I hates to have my feet
Settle on the floor
My shoes is just coffins
Cause ma baby don’t dance me
No more.

I think I’ll leave this review there – it would be stating the obvious to say I think everyone should read this book, and that it’s one of the best and cleverest I’ve ever read. God, I’ll miss this man’s writing, his quietly insane humour and mad-scientist reality-tweaks. I’m just so bloody glad I still haven’t read Skylark Lounge. I’m saving it. I might save it until I’m sixty, just to keep me going.