The Haunting, Horrifying, Hallucinatory Power of The Hounding

Melissa Gouty
1 minute ago
5 min read

Novel by Xenobe Purvis

Illustration in moody grays of five howling hounds, noses together. By ChatGPT

Love of the Gothic

I thought I'd outgrown my penchant for Gothic novels decades ago, but reading Xenobe Purvis' 2025 novel, The Hounding, changed my mind. This novel had everything that used to make me read Victoria Holt, Barbara Michaels, and Mary Stewart. (If you don't remember these prominent authors of the 1980s, all are known for Gothic fiction...an isolated setting like an old mansion, a young woman dealing with life issues, and instances of supernatural or mystical events that create dread and terror.) Purvis' book, however, is far more sophisticated, suggestive, and elusive than the dozens of Gothics I read forty years ago.

The Hounding ranks right up at the top of the genre with the classic Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier...and in my humble opinion, The Hounding may be better.

Xenobe Purvis created a masterful tale weaving together elements of natural disaster, isolation, cruelty, power, rumor, gender roles, and persecution. It is a story that has haunted me weeks after I read it, but not because of the supernatural elements. The Hounding is terrifying because it is ultimately a tale of the power of suggestion and the evil that humans do to each other.

Five girls in the country...

Five orphaned Mansfield girls have been raised by their grandparents outside of the tiny village of Little Nettlebed. The grandmother has just died, leaving Anne, Elizabeth, Hester, Grace, and Mary alone with their near-blind, elderly grandfather, Joseph. Anne is around seventeen. The youngest, Mary, is just six.

Raised in the countryside, away from town and needing only each other's company, the Mansfield girls lack the social skills for easy interaction with strangers, and the town doesn't embrace them. Most of the village's citizens think they are odd, wild, or think themselves better than everyone else.

Enter an insecure, misogynistic drunkard named Pete Darling. Pete is the town's ferryman responsible for transporting people across the river. Sadly, the climate is changing, and there has been very little rain all year, and none for the last several weeks. The river is drying up, creating unexpected tensions and problems that put the townspeople at odds with each other. Worse yet, the water is getting low enough that Pete's ferry business is in grave danger of being unnecessary.

A rumor is started

The power of rumor is undeniable and expansive. One rumor in Little Nettlebed is like a spark dropped into a dry field doused with gasoline. The spark quickly ignites everything, spreading like an unstoppable wildfire that destroys everything in its path.

And that rumor?

Pete Darling claims that he has seen the five Mansfield daughters turn into dogs.

The unhappy, fearful people of Little Nettlebed believe him, make up their own stories, and spread the tale far and wide.

Fear settles over the town, especially when a dead body is found.

Here's the really strange and disturbing thing about The Hounding...

I read this book, fully immersed in its descriptive language, settling into the hot, heavy atmosphere of the setting, with no distractions around me. The book was so powerfully written and suggestive that when I got to the end, I was horrified by the fact that - like the townspeople - my mind was saying, "Could it have been possible? Did those girls really bark? Were they transformed into a pack of dogs?" My practical-minded, rational thinking was obscured and subtly twisted into actual contemplation of whether this could have really happened.

The first page of text:

You know how when you start a book, the first few pages don't stick with you because you don't have enough information to make relevant connections? I don't know if this brief paragraph embedded itself in my subconscious or not, but maybe I remembered it subliminally, which is why I wondered if such a crazy thing could have happened in the end.

The impetus for Purvis' novel was a very brief statement from an actual recorded medical report of 1701:

"Last summer a great rumour spread to us that some young girls . . . in the Oxfordshire countryside had been seized with frequent barking in the manner of dogs." - Dr. John Friend, "Letter to the Editor, concerning a Tale of Rare Convulsions," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society."

Genre-bending

The Hounding is genre-bending. It's not exactly a mystery, a horror, a historical fiction, or a crime novel. Instead, it's all of those, along with an allegory, a folk tale, and a cautionary tale.

I couldn't help but think of Shakespeare's play, Othello, which has a theme that might be a precursor to The Hounding. Iago, an evil man, purposely tries to harm Othello by planting suggestions that Othello's wife, Desdemona, is unfaithful. A dropped handkerchief is all it takes. Of course, Desdemona is NOT unfaithful. She's as loyal as the sun is daily, but the consequences of Iago's actions are tragic.

What makes The Hounding so powerful is that it feels true, a tale every bit as haunting as the best Gothic, only as common and modern as a social post or a news story.

George Yatchisin, a critic in the California Review of Books, stated it best:

For in many ways The Hounding is an all-too-realistic fairy tale.

Critical Reviews:

Macmillan Publishers lists these awards for their book, The Hounding:

National Bestseller • A New York Times Book Review Book Club Pick • A New York Times Notable Book • Indies Choice Awards Finalist • Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, TIME and Kirkus Reviews • The Crucible meets The Virgin Suicides in this haunting debut about five sisters in a small village in eighteenth-century England whose neighbors are convinced they’re turning into dogs.

I must admit y that I'm a little leery of quotes from book reviews since this year, I've been steered to average books based on superlative hype. But The Hounding exceeded my expectations and the blurbs.

These are just a few:

“This is an extraordinary debut, clever, strange and beautifully written.” —The Times (London)

“The Hounding is a vivid exploration of the darkness of human nature and the danger women face every day.” —Apple Books

“Eerie . . . If you’re looking for a novel that addresses the unfairness of being a girl and how being a wild animal is almost preferable . . . this is the book for you.” —The Minnesota Star Tribune

Read The Hounding and judge for yourself. You may discover that the most frightening creatures in Little Nettlebed aren’t the ones accused of howling.

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