Nothing But Grass by Will Cohu review – a memorable rural novel

Insightful, moving depictions of people and place illuminate an accomplished fiction debut

After what has felt like a hiatus, an exciting body of literature is being produced that explores the rural experience. In novels like Sarah Hall’s The Wolf Border, Weathering by Lucy Wood and now Will Cohu’s fiction debut Nothing But Grass, the countryside features not as chi-chi escape for wealthy urbanites, or somewhere remote and excitingly edgy, but a normal place to live and work, a valid nexus for identity and a site of both changelessness and profound change.

It is this last contradiction that provides one of Nothing But Grass’s most striking themes. Set almost entirely in a small, vividly described part of the Lincolnshire wolds, the main body of the novel is concerned with the 30-year period from 1985 to the present day, but there is an early section set in 1875 and the book returns to the Victorian period at its close. This allows us to visit and revisit the manor house, the market town, the woods, farms and quarries, and watch them both persist and alter; it lets us see, too, the differing ways in which they are used and understood across time. The result is a satisfyingly layered portrait of people and place.

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