Lady Into Fox

Silvia Tebrick, out walking with her husband in the Oxfordshire woods, turns without warning into a fox. David Garnett tells what follows with a perfectly straight face, as though such things simply happen. Richard hides his wife from the servants, dresses her, tries to keep up the small manners of their marriage while her fox nature quietly asserts itself. She hunts, she bolts, she wants her freedom, and his love slides into something closer to jailing. Short and coolly narrated, the story works as a fable about possession, devotion, and how far love can stretch before it breaks. It won both the Hawthornden and the James Tait Black prizes on publication. Free to read here in PDF and EPUB.