CAITLIN BREEZE’s debut novel, The Fox Hunt, is a magical dark academia YA revenge fantasy perfect for fans of V E Schwab and Leigh Bardugo.

We caught up with the author to find out what she’s reading.

MEET CAITLIN BREEZE

What are you reading now?

My to-be-read pile is as unmanageable as everyone else’s, but I sometimes like to go the extra mile and create myself a little reading series around a theme! If you’ve not tried reading that way, I’d so recommend it! For me, it’s usually four to eight books, to be read one after another over time, with enough links and contrasts between the books that the reading experience of each one feels richer and fuller through being informed by the others. And I’ve just started one now!

This miniseries could loosely be labelled my ‘Uncanny Novella’ phase. I was lucky enough to get to tour a New York’s independent bookshops earlier this autumn, to talk to booksellers there about my debut novel, The Fox Hunt. But while I was there, I took the chance to ask every bookseller to recommend me a book to build this reading series. The criteria: a novella with uncanny, magical or speculative elements, and truly beautiful writing. Every bookseller found me something different. Some are dark, some are funny. Some are explicitly supernatural, others have just a hint of the eerie running throughout. The results, in case you’d like your own ‘Uncanny Novella’ phase:

The Governesses by Anne Serre (currently reading: eerie governesses prone to Dionysian frenzies, yes please)
Vampires at Sea by Lindsay Merbaum (What We Do In The Shadows on a cruise ship, described as ‘a hilarious snack!’)
The Twenty Days of Turin (Borges-esque Italian magical realism about collective insanity)
The Employees (‘sublimely strange’ literary sci-fi about an interstellar employee mutiny)

If you’re interested in building your own reading series, your local bookseller will be an invaluable resource. Take them your theme and see what they come up with for you!

If you were stranded on a desert island and you could only have five books – what would they be?

Jane Eyre (the copy I first read when I was nine)

Reading Jane Eyre for the first time is my most vividly remembered reading experience. I didn’t need to understand all of the vocabulary: I just felt the passionate emotion in the pages, and responded to it. It struck me so much, I have kept the same copy I first read with me all my life, through every house move. It is a talisman.

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

I love this novella so much I have bought it for almost all of my friends, and some near strangers. It is my most-gifted book. Following a teenager forced to join her domineering father at an Iron Age archaeological site for the summer, it is about finding new freedoms despite the power of old gods.

Persuasion by Jane Austen

It wouldn’t be cheating to choose a Jane Austen complete collection, would it? I reread everything she has written, often and devotedly. For comfort, when I need the bracing effect of her sharp wit and also in the hope of learning from her skill. But I suspect I do need to choose just one of her works, and Persuasion is my favourite. It is autumnal and tender, and the yearning she captures has the power to move me across the centuries.

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

The original, the quintessential fairy tale retellings. This collection finds the subversive female narratives within traditional tales. And the writing is like a midnight craving: sensuous, dark and lush. Carter’s Beauty and the Beast retelling, The Tiger’s Bride, with its celebration of female fierceness and our wilder instincts, was an influential inspiration for my own female beast story in The Fox Hunt.

Tamora Pierce, ‘Complete Collection’

Here, I really have to cheat and have a complete collection. I first read one of Tamora Pierce’s YA fantasy masterpieces when I was seven and have reread at least one every year since then. She is a remarkable writer whose prose stands up just as lovingly to adult eyes as to those of younger readers. And her stories of young women finding their strengths and place in the world were my most important guidebook for growing up. I’d particularly recommend any of her series set in Tortall, like ‘The Song of the Lioness’, ‘Wild Magic’ or ‘The Protector of the Small’.

Where is your favourite place to read?

Absolutely anywhere I won’t be interrupted. Bonus points added for natural daylight and a curl-uppable seating arrangement.

Do you read one book at a time or multiple?

I love focusing on one book at a time, but in practice I find I’m happiest when I have a book option for every mood. So I’ll have one main book at any one time, with multiple others I can dip into on the side when I’m extra tired, angry or in need of something cosy.

Do you use a bookmark or fold the corners of pages?

Always a bookmark. It’s made me laugh, but I felt a visceral shudder at the mention of bending a page corner. We do not fold our beloveds into pieces. (I can hear echoes of my favourite school librarian in my ear as I type this.) Early training can’t be reversed!

What can you tell us about your latest novel The Fox Hunt?

The Fox Hunt is a dark academia fantasy novel. At England’s most ancient university, power awaits those who know how to take it: a sacrifice must be made. Unaware of this, shy student Emma Curran falls for Jasper Balfour, leader of the elite Turnbull Club. She is dazzled by their parties and strange rituals – until one night, the Turnbulls propose a dark little game: a fox hunt. The women run. The men chase. And Emma is transformed into something beastly, trapped in thrall to a dangerous, otherworldly realm. Now she must harness all her ferocity to claw back her mortal life and topple the Turnbull Club, as bargains go unpaid and dark magic spills through the University…

What was the inspiration behind the Turnbull Club?

One night at Oxford University, some years ago, a group of students held a human fox hunt. The male students styled themselves as hunters, chasing female students as foxes through the city. Hearing the story from a friend, the image struck me. Fox hunting, in Britain, has a special association with people who inherit their power. With privilege left unchecked for so long, it believes it has the right to destroy all in its path. That was the start of The Fox Hunt for me.

I’d loved my own time at Cambridge, a university similar to Oxford in the ways wealth and prestige define its image, but it also left questions that lingered long into adulthood. As this story took shape, those questions wove themselves into it: about the enduring role of class in the student body, about where the powerful political leaders in the country have come from and how they ended up receiving that power. Those invisible systems channelling power – like magic, I thought. And The Fox Hunt came to life.

The Turnbull Club is also, of course, inspired by real-life Oxbridge university societies like The Bullingdon Club, famed for the bad behaviour of its members, young men insulated from any consequences of their more unpleasant actions by their wealth and connections, and frequently destined for a future in high office in the UK government. And so, clubs like these are for me a useful microcosm to look at the ways that entrenched systems of inherited power are open to abuse.

What do you hope readers will take away from this novel?

My heroine casts off her expected form to find her true self. Her transformation frees her from the expectations often placed on young women to be always nice, well-behaved, smoothed for the viewing pleasure of others. Instead, she finds strength in her own savagery and beauty in the beastly parts of her nature. That’s what I hope readers can take away with them. I hope they see their own beauty, power, and strength reflected back at them as they read, and feel encouraged to grab at it and celebrate it.

What book character would you be, and why?

There is a piece of me in all of the characters in The Fox Hunt, even the less appealing ones. But I do suspect that in this story, I’m really most likely to be a character just offscreen from the action. While writing, I’d imagine myself strolling the ancient cloisters and libraries of the University with my head in a book, while just around a corner, dark magic and adventures cascaded upon my heroine.

If you could meet one author (living or dead) – who would it be and why?

It would be a privilege to meet Tamora Pierce, who wrote the books that formed the core of my personality as I grew from childhood to adulthood, and inspired me to want to be a writer myself.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Caitlin Breeze lives in London, in a tiny house full of books. After a BA in Classics & Modern Languages from the University of Cambridge – and a Creative MA from Falmouth University in Cornwall, her favourite corner of the world – she currently works as a creative director.

The Fox Hunt is her first novel, and was shortlisted for the Cheshire Novel Prize.

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