SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Want to get drawn into a book from the very first words? Here's Xenobe Purvis reading the opening of her novel, "The Hounding."
XENOBE PURVIS: (Reading) The girls, the infernal heat, a fresh dead body, marching up the river path - the villagers, adorned with gaudy ribbons, some carrying stones, saw exactly what had taken place. The girls had found their quarry at last. The bite mark on the man's fist, the spreading blood, spoke of an unholy struggle.
SIMON: "The Hounding" is one of the most anticipated books of the summer and is the debut novel from Xenobe Purvis, a writer and literary researcher who joins us from the BBC in London. Thank you so much for being with us.
PURVIS: Thank you so much for having me.
SIMON: I gather your novel grows from a nugget of history - five sisters in Oxfordshire, England, in 1700.
PURVIS: Yes, exactly. I came across the true story of five sisters in 1700 who were said to be, quote, "seized with frequent barking in the manner of dogs." I wanted to know what had actually happened to the girls and to imagine how their community might have responded to this strange and possibly even dangerous phenomenon in its midst. Beyond a letter written by the doctor who treated the sisters, I could find little information about the case.
My story is an imaginative response to the situation, and I tried to weave in true details from the time period that felt stranger than fiction. For example, at the start of the book, a giant water creature washes up on the banks of the Thames, a scenario taken from a true account. I also describe how pregnant women are forced to be pallbearers for someone who has died in childbirth, a custom said to have been practiced in England at that time. The book is full of similarly odd and sometimes disturbing real historical details.
SIMON: During what was called the Age of Enlightenment, we must say.
PURVIS: Exactly. And I was very interested in examining the tussle between the more enlightened views of some of the villagers and the deep, profound hold of suspicion and the older thinking that some of the villagers hold on to.
SIMON: Tell us, please, about the Mansfield sisters. They are left on a farm with their recently widowed grandfather, who is blind. Much of the town doesn't seem to have much sympathy for them, do they?
PURVIS: I think the Mansfield sisters, because they behave in sort of idiosyncratic ways - they go about without a chaperone. They don't care to do what is expected of them socially. So there is a deep distrust of them that some of the villagers hold.
SIMON: The weather has been bad for crops. The wells are running shallow. And then a town ferryman, Pete Darling - a good, Christian man - starts a rumor. What happens?
PURVIS: Yes. He claims to see these girls turning into dogs. The reader is left to discern the truth of what Pete is saying. We know that he has lied before. He also makes claims that he has been visited by angels and that his actions are kind of divinely authorized. But his words take hold in the village, as rumors and misinformation sometimes do, and the girls feel the cost of that.
SIMON: I found it heart-piercing when Anne, who I believe is the oldest, exclaims at one point, all of this is our punishment. It has nothing to do with the idea of us becoming dogs and everything to do with the fact of us being girls.
PURVIS: Yes. I mean, the question of girlhood and the place of girls in society - that started the whole thing off for me. And then I was repeatedly struck, in writing the book, by the disturbing contemporary relevance of many of the themes that it raises - the safety of girls and the policing of their bodies, toxic masculinity, resistance to nonconformity. These are concerns that we continue to contend with and that make their way into new stories every day.
SIMON: I made note of one of your lines, when a character observes...
(Reading) The gossiper not only gave but took; something was required by the listener.
Does this suggest something we should all pay attention to now?
PURVIS: I mean, this was something I observed while I was digging into the idea of rumor spreading, which is a central theme in the novel. It feels to me like a kind of delicious contagion that people can't resist. And as you say, the gossiper wants a sort of exchange for what they give, a reaction. It's fascinating to me and preoccupied me while writing the book, certainly.
SIMON: I know this is the nugget that grew into your novel. But as a historical researcher, do you know what happened to the five sisters whose stories you encountered?
PURVIS: I'm afraid that beyond the letter written by the doctor who treated the girls, I wasn't able to find out what became of them. The doctor diagnosed them with a kind of - I suppose what we would call today hysteria. I did manage to find, in records from their village some years later, records of a family of five sisters, all still living, many of whom were married. I can't tell if these are the same sisters, but I like to think that they are. And in fact, I borrowed their Christian names for my characters.
SIMON: So that's how you came up with Elizabeth, Grace, Mary, Hester, Anne.
PURVIS: Yes, exactly.
SIMON: Xenobe Purvis - her debut novel, "The Hounding." Thanks so much for being with us.
PURVIS: Thank you so much for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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