Xenobe Purvis’s debut novel, The Hounding, takes us to the 18th-century village of Little Nettlebed, England, where a drought has taken hold. The river is drying up, wells are becoming shallow, and something mysterious and unnatural hangs in the stifling air.
That’s where we meet the five Mansfield sisters — Anne, Elizabeth, Hester, Grace and little Mary. They have lost both their parents and, more recently, their grandmother, and they live on a farm with their ailing grandfather, who is going blind. A majority of townspeople think there’s something not quite right about the girls, but they can’t pinpoint just what it is. Then one day, the local ferryman, an alcoholic named Pete Darling, says he saw the girls transform into a pack of dogs, and the rumor spreads like wildfire.
Purvis says she drew inspiration from a real-life account of five girls in an Oxfordshire village who were diagnosed with a form of hysteria. The novel expands on that nugget of history to explore mob mentality and superstition, and how fear can cause a community to turn against its most vulnerable members. Add a handful of strong, independent, free-thinking women, and you’ve got a tale to rival Shirley Jackson.
“All of this is our punishment,” eldest daughter Anne says at one point in the novel. “It has nothing to do with the idea of us becoming dogs and everything to do with the fact of us being girls.”
The Hounding is a tense, atmospheric story that’s perfect for late-summer reading. Purvis manages to craft a story that’s both historical and timeless, with lessons on misinformation and toxic masculinity, and the price some pay for being different.
