"When I was seven years old, my parents moved us across the San Francisco Bay from one suburb to another, both bathed in the omnipresent shadow of the burgeoning influence of Silicon Valley. For one glorious year, we lived on a street surrounded by families in neighbouring houses stuffed to the gills with kids around my age. For one glorious summer, I spent every hour that the California sun was awake and often several hours after it went to sleep immersed in the sort of rapture that comes with being a kid surrounded by other kids that had all been jettisoned from their homes for the day and told to “get some fresh air�.

I climbed my first tree that summer, a stately walnut tree that graced the edge of the property, and subsequently had my first fall from that same tree, requiring a handful of stitches and gifting me a little notch of a scar that I can still find on my face if I look close enough. That was the summer that I learned my first swear words from a kid that was two years older than me and then learned what happens when you exclaim, “SHIT!� in front of your aunt and uncle soon after. I rode a black BMX bike hampered with training wheels up and down the street to the various homes of friends and ended up being chased by a gang of high school kids on their own bikes as they screamed, “we’ll get you next time!� after taking flight down the length of our street, panicking and leaping off of my bike to vault over the white wooden fence that lined our front yard.

No matter how long ago that was, I can still feel that alternating sense of burning fear and cold sweat as I sensed them on my heels, chasing me up the street. I can still feel the relief that I experienced when I barrelled through the front door to my house and heard my mom’s voice as she talked to a friend on the phone. I can still feel the tang of the chlorine in my nostrils from the pool that we had in the backyard as I walked through the house and launched myself straight into the pool, still wearing all of my clothes, letting the cool water strip away the stress, the sweat, the heat. But the feeling of panic, the thrill of the fear, i can still feel those prodding at a part of my brain that will never disappear and will never die.

As I read through the eleven stories that make up Julia Elliott’s new collection, Hellions, I felt that surge of memory, that flicker of nostalgia, that pinprick of dread come swarming back into my blood and felt myself looking over my shoulder to see if I was yet again being chased by that small army of boys on their bikes. It’s not enough to say that you had the chance to read one of Julia’s stories, that word - “read� - it doesn’t do enough to define what your mind and your body go through as you take each of her stories in. Her ability to pull you into a scene with just a few sentences and introduce you to a new cast of characters all with fresh perspectives amidst unfamiliar surroundings and allow you to feel as if you’ve lived with these characters and their experiences for a good chunk of your life is masterful. I hesitate to say that you experience her stories rather than read them because even that doesn’t feel like enough. You inhale, you start the first line and then you don’t exhale until the final period marks the end of the story. You live it, it sustains you.

It’s extremely fitting that when you pick up a copy of Hellions, it’s cover is graced with quotes from two legends - Carmen Maria Machado and Jeff VanderMeer - extolling the pleasures of the stories contained within its pages. Both writers are well-known for their deft ability to pull you deep into the chaos of their own stories and surround you with an abundance of imagery that pushes your imagination and fascination to the limits. Hellions is deliciously lush in it’s own right with intense, biting and snarling descriptions of the sweat and sting of the sweet and rotten summer air, the sludge at the banks of ponds and the chittering of insects and the stink of bogs and swamps, the ache of love, of loss, of needing more. Julia clearly delights in playing with language and all of it’s mighty potential and gives a voice to a way of looking at things that usually only nags at the corners of most people’s minds, unable to find purchase and lost to time.

Throughout Hellions, childhood and all of it’s blissful wonder and naughty escapism run rampant. Even in the few stories that don’t feature children directly, it’s presence is felt to extreme degrees - both as defiance to the idea of growing up and maturing and as an ode to the sheer capabilities of an imagination allowed to flourish. The characters that traverse through each of the stories seem to transcend time and place despite it being remarkably clear when and where these stories are occurring without even a single breath given to the when or the where. They appear to exist in a liminal space in time where the past, present and future collide and allow for reality to break from it’s strict rules and standards, creating a universe unto itself.

If anything, Hellions feels like a flex of the range and abilities of it’s author, both in it’s playfulness with genre-hopping and in the way that similar elements inhabit each of the stories, giving them the feeling of being intrinsically diverse and ever-connected in spirit. Split-level houses, the struggle that comes with being forced to grow up, the pain of being virtually ignored by parents that are at constantly at odds with each other, the onslaught of love, the overwhelming presence of nature, mysticism and mythology, the cleansing power of water - all are central to so much of what lies at the heart of Hellions as words and sentences are turned into a living organism that you can almost taste, almost smell and will undoubtedly reach out to and attempt to touch.

We are barely a quarter of the way into 2025 and I have already had the pleasure to read four new collections of short stories that have left me winded, gutted and thrilled for what’s occurring right now in the world of short fiction. Hellions is the first of this batch to be released and it might just be my favourite.

Thank you to both NetGalley and Tin House for allowing me to read an advanced copy of a book that I will be re-reading at least once a year.
"

"I’d like to start by thanking both W.W. Norton & Co. and NetGalley for granting me the amazing opportunity to review an advance copy of this collection of stories.

I can openly admit that I went into Lydia Millet’s new collection of short stories, *Atavists*, with more than a little bit of bias. Not only is she someone that I had already admired and treasured as a writer, but her 2020 novel *A Children’s Bible* is on my short list of what I consider to be the greatest works of modern fiction.

*Atavists* promised to be a grouping of short stories that all bear a loose connection with one another, but as I spent time with this collection, I began to see that the connections went far beyond a series of individuals making passing references to each other, the same characters appearing in multiple stories or just everyone being simply aware of each other in some sort of fashion.

The cast of characters at the heart of *Atavists* share one defining common thread, one of all being stuck at a that inexplainable part in their lives where they are searching for something that isn’t necessarily tangible and definitely not without complication. Call it meaning, call it a feeling or call it a purpose, but each of them feels the presence of a type of void that is near impossible to contextualize.

Buzz, an empty nest father, is seeking something that satisfies his soul while also fulfilling his need to help others after his doctors inform him that he will never run a marathon again. Twenty year old Mia is looking for direction in finding a career path that caters to her particular set of skills that others in her life label as outdated or of little to no use in modern society. Collette is hoping that a small revenge will help mend the part of her heart that still feels broken after a brief love affair ended with cruelty and ghosting. Nick wants an answer to something, anything. And the search goes on and on with each character supplying a fresh and unique look at what it means to want or need or feel something that they cannot put into words.

We get such a brief time with this rather large cast of characters and yet Millet so deftly brings each of them to life, colouring them in and giving each of them a depth that makes it feel as if their every movement is being acted out directly in front of us as the reader. Conversations are filled with references to modern events and situations and don’t ever feel forced or generic, but rife with language that gratuitously and accurately drinks up the eccentricities and nuances of at least three separate generations all attempting to understand each other with varying levels of success.

The art of the short story is one that eludes many people that attempt to make writing a profession or a hobby. And that’s not a criticism, but rather a testament to just how difficult of a medium it is to practice. With the stories that make up Atavists, Millet has perfected the balance of providing enough narrative and enough meaning for each story to stand on its own two legs, while also placing that little nag in the back of each reader’s head that just wants a little bit more time with the individuals living inside of each story. Because of this, Atavists is a perfect place to jump into the bibliography of Lydia Millet and get a little taste of what has made many of her novels feel so vibrant, so alive and so apt for the times that we live in."

"Two months after my first ever visit to see a therapist, my first relationship met its end. Over time, I’ve had moments where I’ve attempted to connect these two incidents, to draw some sort of cause and effect out of the pain and loss that I felt all those years ago - something to take the weight of any sort of blame off of my shoulders to place in the care of someone I would never see again, whose face I wouldn’t recognize if you gave me half a million chances.

Soon after, I moved back to Seattle after a short time away from the city and began living in a house that hugged itself against the interstate like a lover. A house that if you referred to it as being in a state of disrepair, you’d have been doing it a kindness. My roommate had also recently found himself at the end of a relationship and we spent a year drowning ourselves in various cups, languishing over guitars in the basement practice space and wandering the late night streets of our neighbourhood and beyond, mired in the sort of conversations where the end goal is to satiate the sadness we both felt was consuming us as we made attempts to solve the empty space that we had allowed to form within us with far-fetched plans to solve the rest of the world and all of it’s trappings.

Hayden Casey’s debut authorial release, Show Me Where The Heart Is, is a collection of thirteen short stories that often straddle the line between reality and magical realism as the central character at the heart of each story attempts to suss out the mystery of what piece of them is missing and causing each of them to descend into a place where something akin to hopelessness would feel like a gift. Hayden’s characters are lonely and lost in a way that bleeds through the page and stains your fingers as you experience their grief, their annoyances, their utter confusion right along with them.

But while the feelings and emotions that these characters traverse through are very real and remarkably intense in how honest and unrestrained they feel, they often butt up against the boundaries of reality in an immensely clever and unique fashion that highlights the ability of Hayden as a writer. “Pretty Things� tells the story of a college student that feels left out of her dorm roommate’s life as her roommate becomes so consumed with the man that she’s dating that she begins to grow body parts that belong to him, seemingly as a replacement for her own. While “Smoothing� mirrors the natural dissolve of a failing relationship as a woman wakes up to see that her partner’s mouth has closed and smoothed over, serving as a starting point to watching the person that she has lived with and loved for years slowly begin to shrink and disappear a little bit at a time.

The characters that make up the stories contained within Show Me Where The Heart Is are adamant in their obsessions with whatever piece of their psyche is missing, whatever part of their heart feels as if it’s failing or whatever it is about themselves that they feel is lacking and wanting. While these sort of depictions can make for an unsettling read at times, that feeling has nothing to do with shock value or pushing the story to places that feel unreal or unsavoury, but more so because the mindset that these characters travel through as they struggle through emotional minefields feels remarkably honest and truthful in a way that can leave you gasping at how seen you feel and how close these stories get to the crushing pressure that arrives with heartbreak, loss and disillusionment.

For a first collection, Hayden is already writing and punching well above his weight class and with his first full-length novel being released in the fall of 2025, it feels like we are on the cusp of witnessing the emergence of a writer that we will be hearing about for a very long time to come. Show Me Where It Hurts is an elegant collection of short stories that only encourages my belief that we are experiencing a renaissance of short fiction right now.

Thank you to the incredible people over at Split/Lip Press for sharing an advanced copy of Hayden's book. Split/Lip is an independent publisher that is producing one remarkable release after another and they deserve your love and support."

Chris | Company Pants wants to read A Harvest of Furies