The Hounding author Xenobe Purvis admires the toughness of Jane Eyre – debutiful

Xenobe Purvis is a British-based writer who was born in Tokyo. She’s studied at the University of Oxford and Royal Holloway. Purvis was part of the London Library’s Emerging Writers Programme. Her debut novel The Hounding, is billed as The Crucible meets The Virgin Suicides as it follows five sisters in a small village in eighteenth-century England whose neighbors are convinced they’re turning into dogs.

We asked the writer to answer our recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers could get to know the books that influenced her life and inspired her debut book.

What was the first book you were obsessed with as a child?

As a child I read a book a day. The Chronicles of Narnia, The Northern Lights: I was spoilt for earth-shatteringly good stories. At the age of about ten or eleven I moved from fantasy to mystery, running headlong into an obsession with Agatha Christie. For a long time I was intent on solving a murder. (Happily, no murder ever presented itself to be solved.)

What book helped you through puberty?

I was not tough; I admired the toughness of Jane Eyre.

What book do you think all teenagers should be assigned in school?

Compulsory reading feels like the death knell for any book. But I loved reading Lord of the Flies as a teen—perhaps other teenagers might enjoy it too.

If you were to teach a class on Damn Good Writing, what books would make the syllabus?

Middlemarch, The Portrait of a Lady, Mrs Dalloway, Giovanni’s Room, A Single Man. Each of these novels is a masterclass in style and psychological insight.

What books helped guide you while writing your book?

So many. We Have Always Lived in the Castle (alongside Shirley Jackson’s haunting story “The Lottery”), The Virgin Suicides, Little Women, The Bloody Chamber. 

What books are on your nightstand now?

The diaries and notebooks of Patricia Highsmith. Gurnaik Johal’s Saraswati, Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov (last read several years ago). An exhilarating mix.