Something is rotten in the village of Little Nettlebed. There isn't enough rain. A sturgeon of ungodly proportions has been beached on the bank of the Thames. Worse, five sisters have tried to save its life, defying both the mysterious beneficence that brought the fish to shore and local norms dictating that it must be killed for food. In the glow of the late-afternoon sun, the world is no longer beautiful. Instead, it is sickly, the light 'jaundicing the saucers of white flowers' on an elder tree. It is the early 18th century in Oxfordshire, England, and readers likely know how this story goes: A 'season of strangeness' begins, and the witch, or witches, who are responsible must be found. Except it goes weirder, and wilder, in Xenobe Purvis's debut novel, The Hounding. The suspected witches in question'those five sisters'stand accused of transgressing nature by transforming not the world around them but their own bodies. The local ferryman, a perpetually inebriated and aggrieved...
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