REVIEW:
Hellions

Runestone, volume 12

REVIEW:
Hellions

Runestone, volume 12

Review by Alex Jaspers

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Horror, science fiction, folktale, and fantasy converge in the genre-bending short story collection Hellions by Julia Elliott, which takes readers into the forests, bogs, and suburbs of the American South, and reveals the monsters hidden within. 

Hellions is the third novel published by South Carolina writer Elliott with Tin House Press, and her second short story collection. Like her previous works, Hellions is a blend of many things: Southern gothic settings, fairytale-like creatures, and sci-fi technology. But one thing makes this novel completely unique from her previous tales: its hellions. 

The Oxford Language Dictionary defines a hellion as “a rowdy, mischievous, or troublemaking person, especially a child.” Elliott’s Hellions is not only full of these unwieldy children; it is aimed at them. Many will find this collection engaging, rich with vivid language and full of tantalizing subjects, but none will connect with it as much as those who were once rabid little girls dreaming of fairies in their backyards.

The title of the collection, and the cover, both come from the second story featured, “Hellion.” The story follows Butter, a twelve-year-old self-described hellion, who teaches her cousin Alex the ins and outs of her small rural Southern town. Her pet alligator Dragon is featured on the cover of the novel, with his maw bared, and his body wreathed in pick flowers. In an interview with the Southern Review of Books, Elliott said there’s a reason Butter’s story gave the collection its name. “I realized that the title story, ‘Hellion,’ embodied the perfect central concept for a collection about unruly girls and women who lurk along the border between the real and surreal.” Butter encapsulates this split between the real and unreal, with one foot stuck in her dysfunctional homelife, and the other stuck in the mud of the forest, searching for a creature she calls the Swamp Ape. She isn’t the only protagonist warring with themself over their stilted life and their desire for something more. After “Hellion,” that theme only grows, as we discover more hellion girls, and what happens when those little hellions grow up. 

“Bride” introduces us to one of those hellions now grown, a nun named Hilda living in a medieval convent struck by an outbreak of the plague, who grapples with following her faith and her desires for another nun. “Bride” not only touches on the “sin” of giving into pleasure and carnal desires, but also of queerness being seen as a “hellion” trait, something that makes one a trouble maker or an outsider. Throughout the collection, Elliot touches on these traits that make women feel like they’re out of place, devils, and hellions. But in every story, she proves that it really makes them strong. 

One of the most delicious things about Elliott’s writing is her oddball, strange, and disturbing character descriptions. An abbess is described as “stringy and yellow as a dried parsnip” and an abbot having a head that “glistens like a broiled ham” in “Bride,” while the Wild Professor in “Erl King” is described as both having “a face going to ruin from booze and passion” and “crepey skin, scrotal eye bags, a few wisps of hair on a scaly scalp,” just to name a few. These descriptions are not only fun to read, but they lean into the whimsical, unnatural, and folktale tone of the whole collection, making these works feel like fresh Brothers Grimm tales, and set up the gorgeous settings that Elliott has meticulously crafted. 

Inspired by Elliott’s childhood in South Carolina, the settings within Hellions are rich, fragrant, humid, and thick with the scent of summer. It’s easy to get lost within the worlds of Hellions, whether they be as ancient as the medieval convent featured in “Bride,”or as futuristic as the Virtual Reality fictions of “Moon Witch, Moon Witch.” And the characters within these stories mirror or complement these settings, whether they are trying to escape from them, or trying to escape to them. Each world is different, vivid, and compelling, with its own monster waiting to be found within. 

In “Erl King,” the young protagonist shares a dream she’s often had: “But I remembered the restless longing, the desire to crawl out of my window at night, climb onto the rotted roof, and get swept up by a gust of otherworldly wind.” Hellions is a book for those of us who have shared that dream. It is a book for those who were once unwieldy children, dreaming past their sheltered lives. A book for those hellions now grown, nostalgic for the rampant freedom of their childhood. A collection for those of us who still check tree trunks for hidden fairy doors, just in case. And most of all, a novel for those of us who would follow a strange creature off into the mysterious woods, always.