Sartre tried to prove that hell is other people by locking three strangers in a room for eternity and watching them torture each other. Similarly Will Cohu seems determined to show that hell is our own families.
What is remarkable is that Cohu’s family members were not a collection of horrific monsters. On the contrary, they appear normal and often likeable people. They are almost disturbingly typical of many middle-class families with children who, like Cohu himself, were born in the 1960s. The names and places might change, but the characters and events are surprisingly familiar.
The Wolf Pit opens with an evocation of the North Yorkshire moors that is almost kitsch in its flowery prose. This transmutes into a childhood memoir of visits to the author’s grandparents, Dorothy and George, who live on the moors and seem to epitomise a child’s-eye view of the ideal relatives.
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