Hellions - Orreadi

256 pages

English language

Published 2025 by Tin House Books, LLC.

ISBN:: 978-1-963108-06-4

In a plague-stricken medieval convent, a nun works on a forbidden mystic manuscript. In rural South Carolina, an alligator named Dragon becomes a beloved pet for a precocious, tough-talking twelve-year-old. During a long, muggy July, an adolescent girl finds unexpected power as her family obsesses over the horror film The Exorcist. On the outskirts of a Southern college town, a young woman resists the tyranny of a shape-shifting older professor as she develops her own sorceress skills. And at a feminist art colony in the North Carolina mountains, a group of mothers contends with the supernatural talents their children have picked up from a pair of mysterious orphans who live in the woods.

With exuberance, ferocity, and astounding imagination, Julia Elliott’s Hellions jumps from the occult to the comic, from the horrific to the wondrous, in eleven stories of earthbound characters who long for the otherworldly.

2 editions

allison ✒️ reviewed Hellions by Julia Elliott

4 stars

I always find it hard to rate or review short story collections since each story is different. One could be so amazing and another could be, well, a dud. That's also the reason I'm not a big fan of collections. However, this one honestly blew me away. The stories are captivating, tense, emotional, and most often feel complete. The characters are full people with quirks and charms, and described so well that you can clearly picture them. This is my biggest rave about Elliott's writing: her descriptions. Everything in these stories is alive. I could see it all from the people, to the furniture, to the landscape. The landscapes, too, are a character. Each story has amazing nature imagery. The author always takes time to describe something going on out there. She brings our focus to nature in each story. It's beautiful.

The only reason this is 4 stars …

I always find it hard to rate or review short story collections since each story is different. One could be so amazing and another could be, well, a dud. That's also the reason I'm not a big fan of collections. However, this one honestly blew me away. The stories are captivating, tense, emotional, and most often feel complete. The characters are full people with quirks and charms, and described so well that you can clearly picture them. This is my biggest rave about Elliott's writing: her descriptions. Everything in these stories is alive. I could see it all from the people, to the furniture, to the landscape. The landscapes, too, are a character. Each story has amazing nature imagery. The author always takes time to describe something going on out there. She brings our focus to nature in each story. It's beautiful.

The only reason this is 4 stars instead of 5 is because there are about two stories that seem to want to do too much, and therefore don't feel complete. I wanted more from them and felt let down. Also, not every story worked for me even though I could recognize how they were well-written. I think there were one or two stories I didn't enjoy very much. That doesn't mean they were bad or seemed out of place. They just didn't click for me.

Subjects

American literature