Xenobe Purvis was born in Tokyo in 1990. She read English Literature at the University of Oxford, has an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, and was part of the London Library’s Emerging Writers Programme. She is a writer and literary researcher, with essays published in the Times Literary Supplement, the London Magazine, and elsewhere. Her debut novel, The Hounding, was published by Penguin Books UK.
Your book takes up issues of gendered power dynamics, social pressures, and group think. While perennial, these issues have reached new heights in the age of generative AI and “fake news.” Why did you decide to set this book so far in the past? How did the setting help your arguments?
The historical setting came first. I read about five real sisters in 18th-century Oxfordshire who were rumored to be behaving like dogs—an intriguing true story, and one that instantly gripped me. I decided to research as much as I could about the historical context and social framework in which the girls were living.
Repeatedly, the question of power arose: girls traditionally had little power, but girls who operated outside convention, who were seemingly possessed, let’s say, or somehow aligned with the supernatural, were momentarily very powerful because people were afraid of them. I thought a lot about these power dynamics, and related themes, such as rumor-spreading and misinformation, and was interested in how they resonated with issues today. I think the historical distance makes these ideas feel fresh for the reader, offering a new entry into familiar themes.
There’s an element of magical realism in this book, in part brought on by the religiosity and spiritualism of the time. What role does the fantastical play in your work? Do you find genre limiting or generative?
The blurring of the real and the fantastical is something that strongly appeals to me. My tastes have changed over the years: I used to favor real oddity in my reading and writing, but now I prefer something slightly more tempered, slightly more suggestive.
There are moments of magical realism in this book, but they are delivered to the reader through the filter of unreliable witnesses. The beliefs of the period also play a role, as you say. Genre can be helpful and instructive, but I’m keen on stories that defy expectation.
There are some violent scenes in the book, as well. What role do you want violence to play in the narrative? Is it emotionally evocative, a plot device, both, or something else?
It’s impossible to read or write about England in that period without acknowledging the violence that underscored everyday life. I tried to create an atmosphere of pervasive threat, which governs the lives of everyone in the narrative—whether human or animal. Much like the brutal heatwave that descends on the village, the grip of violence on that community is inescapable.
Each chapter in the book gives insight into a different character’s perspective. When you were writing the book, what was your approach to character development? How did you decide the order in which different characters appear? Were any of the characters more difficult to develop than others?
I wanted each character to undergo some sort of vital change over the course of the novel. From sobriety to drunkenness, from innocence to guilt, and so on. I knew the arc that each of them would experience, but—as often happens with fiction—the characters’ quirks and eccentricities presented themselves to me as I was writing. They became real; they offered me new directions.
The order in which they appeared was really dictated by the plot. Some places were physically off-limits to some characters; for example, scenes that reveal the sisters in their domestic setting could only be perceived by the farmhand Thomas or their grandfather, who lived with them. I tried to balance chapters showing a softer side to the sisters, their interior lives, with chapters focalized through the more cynical perspectives of villagers who believed that they were evil.
In terms of difficulty: I loved developing each of them and I felt they each offered something thrillingly different to the story. I was surprised how much I enjoyed creating the interior world of Pete Darling, the alcoholic antagonist.
This book takes on sexism against women and girls, as well as toxic masculinity, with both being exacerbated by social pressure. How might the two be connected, in your book and in society at large?
I couldn’t write about toxic masculinity without examining its impact on women and girls; these issues go hand in hand, as is so often made painfully clear today. But it also felt important to consider how this very violent and patriarchal power structure might affect the boys and young men in the community. I really wanted to examine how damaging toxic masculinity can be for any outsider to convention.
The Hounding is your debut novel. What advice do you have for emerging writers navigating the pitching and publishing process for the first time?
Arm yourself with patience and determination. I have a graveyard of rejected manuscripts sitting in drawers, representing many years of my life. Keep going! Good luck!
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