Lo salvaje

by Julia Elliott

Una mujer con Alzheimer se somete a una terapia de restauración cerebral y hace emerger todo un mundo perdido. Una anciana siniestra espanta a su nieta y a las amigas de esta con visiones proféticas sobre el juicio final. Una mujer recupera su juventud mediante un tratamiento que combina tecnología de vanguardia con filosofía de autoayuda. Una niña se siente inevitablemente atraída por uno de sus nuevos vecinos, que se transforma cuando hay luna llena. Un doctor registra las experiencias amorosas de un robot de género neutro en un laboratorio de inteligencia artificial…

En los once relatos que conforman su primer libro, Julia Elliott mezcla la extrañeza del gótico sureño con una sofocante atmósfera apocalíptica, la ciencia ficción con los elementos maravillosos de los cuentos de hadas. Entre lo ridículo y lo sublime, y sin abandonar los principios de la narración clásica, Elliott nos deleita con una prosa dotada de un lirismo exuberante, grandes dosis de humor negro y una profunda vocación experimental.

Sus relatos evocan la obra de otras escritoras como Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor, Karen Russell, Helen Oyeyemi o Angela Carter. Satirizan aspectos de la vida contemporánea y expresan disconformidad con lo que está sucediendo en el mundo. Se mueven entre lo surreal y lo cotidiano, retuercen los géneros mezclando lo gótico con lo distópico, la ciencia ficción con lo absurdo, lo grotesco con el horror y con lo maravilloso.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Science Fiction, Horror, Anthologies

296 pages, Paperback

First published September 22, 2014

About the author

Julia Elliott’s fiction has appeared in Tin House, the Georgia Review, Conjunctions, Fence, Best American Fantasy, and other publications. She has won a Pushcart Prize and a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award. Her debut story collection, The Wilds, was chosen by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Buzzfeed, and Book Riot as one of the Best Books of 2014 and was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. She is currently working on a novel about hamadryas baboons, a species she has studied as an amateur primatologist. She teaches English and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, where she lives with her daughter and husband. She and her spouse, John Dennis, are founding members of the music collective Grey Egg.

Reviews

[Gea]

I can't do this anymore. I really tried, but I just can't continue. Something must be wrong with me. Everyone is raving about this and it's quite evident The Wilds is full of agile, incredible writing. It brims and overflows with creativity. Elliot is a wordsmith, riffing with language like a master musician. But--yes, there is a but, it is so laden with ugliness, so seeped in revulsion for the human body, that I feel icky after every story I read.

"Mom has refused to give me a home perm, which means I'll be ugly for the rest of the summer, and one of my little boobies has grown an alien lump down in it that hurts. A massive zit festers in my nose like a parasite; I've spent the morning picking at it with a needle. . . . The sour chunks of food I keep sucking from my braces symbolize something--I'm not sure what, but it makes me think of the night Dad told me about Turdis philomelos, the songbird that lines its nest with mud, dung, and rotten wood. Walling itself in a domestic prison of its own crap was how he put it." (--from the Whipping)

Okay, I admit I'm possibly being squeamish and oversensitive. I'm a medic. You'd think I'd be used to the various degradations of the human body. It's a testament to Elliot's skill that her descriptions physically revolt me. They make my skin crawl. They elicit a visceral reaction. This is what an awesome writer she is.

Seventy-five percent humidity, and the boils on my inner thighs have fused and burst, trickling a yellow fluid. My neck pustules are starting to weep. Choice ecthymic sores have turned into ulcers. I spend my downtime pacing the house naked. I shift from chair to chair, daybed to hammock listening to the demented birds. A plague of small green finches has invaded the island. They flit through the brush, squawk, and devour berries. (--from Regeneration at Mukti)

You can see, feel, hear, and taste her descriptions. This is a problem for me, because her descriptions, though expertly rendered, are absolutely disgusting. An undercurrent of sexual lust runs through her writing that is even more disturbing nestled as it is amidst "dribbling boils" and "lip cankers", "incrustation" and "itching".

Ben's acne had broken into bloom. His face glowed with an eerie bluish luster, and I thought that maybe his father had brought nuclear radiation home in his clothes. Zits swarmed like fire ants on Ben's brow. Purple pimples glistened like drops of jelly on his cheeks. Fat whiteheads nestled behind the wings of his nose. Only his eyes and lips had escaped the infection. (--from The Wilds)

And then--SPOILER ALERT!!!!! SHE KISSES HIM!!!

Ugh. I need a breath. I need to come up for air. The thing about reading a book, even a collection of short stories, is that it is like diving into another world, another consciousness. And although Elliot's world is warped and witty, satirical and sometimes gorgeous, it's just not a world I want to swim in for very long. Apparently, I don't have the stamina for this particular sea.

I decline to rate this. I want to give it two stars because "I didn't like it", but that suggests that it's not incredibly unique and wonderful. It deserves at least four stars for pure skill and imagination, but that would suggest I like it. Any writer who evokes such an intense response in her reader has something going on. In this case, I will simply remain silent. But, oh that cover! Every time I see that cover I want to jump right in.

[✨Bean's Books✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't get it...
This is a collection of Southern Gothic tales written by Julia Elliott.
I really just don't get it. When I think of Gothic I don't think of aliens and nanobots. Maybe I have it all wrong but those are more sci-fi and futuristic type elements. Some of these stories would even borderline on dystopian rather than Gothic in my mind. Not all of the stories were this way as we do have talk of werewolves and the like. Like I said maybe I'm way off base here but I just don't see those things as Gothic.
One of the real problems that I had with this book was the fact that none of these stories really have an ending. It's almost as if Elliott stopped writing right in the middle of the story or, even worse, she leaves us with a cliffhanger at the end. This is a good tie-in for some stories if she were ever to produce another compilation of short stories with sequels to some of these written here, however for almost every single one in a series of short stories to end this way it is not good. I mean come on give the reader some goddamn closure here please!
As many have stated before me, this book is beautifully written, I cannot deny that. Elliot certainly has a way with the English language. So much so that her detail of certain things makes you see, hear and smell what is going on in the story! It's that powerful! I do take my hat off to her in this measure.
Another thing that I really have to tip my hat to her for is that she has written these tales that are no doubt inspired by much older tales but she has written them as very updated versions. These are not just Gothic tales, these are tales for the new millennium. They are written with verbiage and a syntax style that anyone of this age could pick up and enjoy. This part was very refreshing to me as it was not simply a rehash of old stories but almost as if they were brand new stories written just yesterday.
And may I just say, I am absolutely in love with this cover! The design is absolutely perfect for its content. Well, most of its content anyway. 😂
All in all I'd say it was an entertaining read but it did have some issues that I cannot ignore. I would recommend it to those looking for something a little different in the reading.

Or you can watch my review here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cEOc...

[Victorian Spirit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Se trata del debut literario de esta autora que encuentra en el sur profundo de EEUU el escenario perfecto para 11 relatos realmente difíciles de clasificar dentro de un solo género. Sí, hay elementos de terror y góticos, pero también de ciencia ficción, de relato costumbrista, de distopía, de cuento de hadas… y las fronteras entre un género y otro quedan bastante desdibujadas.
Los libros de relatos no suelen entusiasmarme, pero Julia Elliot me ha sorprendido muy positivamente con una prosa muy rica, repleta de referencias sensoriales y con temáticas de lo más variado.
En vez de recurrir a grandes monstruos, Julia Elliot explora el terror de lo cotidiano, tratando temas como la salud, el amor, la familia… pero siempre desde perspectivas inesperadas y sorprendentes.
Por último, me gustaría destacar el gran acierto de situar todo en un contexto sureño, que es lo que más cohesión y personalidad da a los distintos relatos. Da igual que estemos hablando de robots o de hombres lobos: el olor a granja de pollos, a manglar y a comida cajún son una constante.

RESEÑA COMPLETA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eR_2...

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reviewing a short story collection is a bit of a conundrum - do you review story by story or the overall feeling of the collection as a whole? I always worry that overall feeling sells the moments of greatness short while writing a review of each story is certainly time consuming.

Overall impression: I love the mixing of genres in these stories. I want readers to grow more comfortable not knowing what to expect, and Elliott is a good author to stretch a reader outside of his or her comfort zone. I've seen so many negative reviews including phrases like "not my thing" or "not what I expected." These stories sting with satire; obviously Julia Elliott pays attention to societal movement and enjoys mocking the logical outcomes of behavior. The stories dip and border into the fantastical but at the same time the characters feel like people you would meet in situations not too far from where we are. Sometimes you end up on the edge of the cliff at story's end, but I picture the author nodding slyly in the darkness at your discontent. She is waiting for you to get it. The title is appropriate because many of the stories have to do with that short distance humanity has from the wild, but also the title story contains a family called "The Wilds."

Hmm, you know, I don't think I'll review each story. I will let you discover them on your own.

I discuss the collection a bit more on an episode of my podcast, Reading Envy. I will post a link when the episode goes live.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Copy provided by GoodReads First Reads program.

This book was weird. Gross. Uncomfortable. Icky. I found it also: funny, charming, well-written, and a great collection of short stories.

I had a feeling I might be in for a treat based on the cover alone. The stories contain elements of danger, sexuality, and the basic want to be accepted.

The only thing that I didn't like is that I felt that each story could have been a book on its own. Each story made me want to know what happened before the moments we are shown. What happened after the curtain closed? How did they go on? There was a point in each story where I dreaded what might happen next, but I was unable to stop. I HAD to know what happened.

I think this book is perfect for people who like the strange and unusual. It is filled with misfits and outcasts. All seem strangely familiar. Like shadow versions of the society we all live in.

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m going to rip off something from Matt Bell’s Facebook page for my review of The Wilds By Julia Elliot:

“It's easier for people to let go if the world is strange. In a realist story, it sometimes feels like you're reading someone else's story. In a certain kind of non-realist story, the slight unfamiliarity of events unfolding in a familiar setting can let you inhabit a story, can make you feel like its happening to you.”

The quote is from a talk writer Diane Cook gave to Bell’s undergrad workshop at ASU, and I thought is was a fitting way to describe Elliot’s excellent debut collection of weird stories. The stories in The Wilds all take place in utterly familiar environments: Suburban neighborhoods, a convalescent home, the neighborhood bar, the local high school. The settings are benign and nothing more than static in our day-to-day world, and each of these settings would make for ideal canvass’ for a contemporary writer to tell equally benign tales of lost love and broken ambitions.

But what Elliot does is twist these settings and injects them with a healthy dose of the weird, and turns them into something magical and akin to an adult fairy tale. The suburban neighborhood becomes overrun with wild dogs, broken entirely free from their bonds with humanity; the convalescent home becomes a laboratory where geneticists and robotics experts restore the memories and bodies of the old; the neighborhood bar becomes a place where frightened adults gather to gossip about the plague sweeping the country where teenagers become addicted to electronic devices and junk food and then fall into a mysterious coma, only to suddenly awaken and disappear.

The minute strangeness of these stories allows the reader to become truly lost in these odd worlds, and you can’t help but feel for the too brief of time you’re inhabiting them that this is actually the world we live in, where the impossible simply walks alongside us and we think of it as nothing more than common place.

Elliot’s prose is elegant and poetic, and her imagination seems boundless. I try to avoid using words like ‘perfect’ or ‘masterpiece’, but it’s nearly impossible for me to not use them when describing The Wilds, because each story is a miniature masterpiece, and the collection is just about as perfect a short story collection as I’ve run into in years.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE WILDS ist eines der herausragenden Leseerlebnisse dieses Jahres!
Ich tue mich schwer damit, die Faszination, die die Stories auf mich ausüben, genau begründen zu können. Zunächst ist zu sagen, dass Julia Elliott rein sprachlich schon eine großartige Erzählerin ist, wortgewaltig, witzig, verstörend, mit einem einzigartigen Tonfall - alles, was man von Erzählern erwartet und doch so selten geboten bekommt.
Ihre Texte sind funkelnde Kristalle, die aus verschiedenen Winkeln betrachtet in allen Farben des Spektrums blitzen.
Vielseitig und vielschichtig, erzeugen sie eine intensive Spannung beim Lesen, eine Faszination, der ich mich nicht entziehen kann.

Bei einem solchen Erzählungsband läßt sich nicht in wenigen Worten sagen, worum es im Kern geht.
Es scheint mir vor allem um die Entfremdung des Menschen zu sich selbst, zu seinesgleichen und zur Natur zu gehen. Darum, wie dünn die feine Membran der Kultur ist, die uns von unserer animalischen Herkunft und unserer Umwelt trennt, darum, wie schnell Risse entstehen, die uns wieder "verwildern" lassen.
Erotik und Tod einerseits, Bio-Kost, fortgeschrittene Medizin und Selbsterfahrungskurse andererseits: die Texte bewegen sich im Spannungsgeflecht widersprüchlicher Daseinsbedingungen, man mag sie als Southern Gothic, Magischen Realismus, surreale Feen-Märchen oder auch anders bezeichnen.

Ihre Stärke, egal wie man die Stories genretechnisch eintüten möchte, besteht in der Spannung zwischen der lupenreinen, exakten, zugleich kühlen und sinnlichen Sprache und den Abgründen, die sich unter der schillernden Oberfläche verbergen.
Form und Inhalt passen perfekt zueinander, und wahrscheinlich ist genau das der Grund, warum dieses Buch so großartig ist.

[Libros Prohibidos · Rating 4 out of 5]

En Lo salvaje no es necesario escaparse de la ciudad, abandonar el trabajo y emprender un viaje hacia el corazón de las tinieblas para encontrar el horror. De hecho, no hace falta salir de casa, ni de la oficina o el colegio; es precisamente en estos lugares donde transcurren unas historias que llenarán de incomodidad al lector e invitarán a la reflexión.

Reseña completa: https://libros-prohibidos.com/lo-salv...

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 3 out of 5]

1st story 'The Whipping' strange, how easily the strange is accepted as normal within a family.

2nd story, Limbs, rather fascinating and innovative, senior and dementia home where some are given brain stimulation and limbs that work to help some walk again.

3rd story Feral. Packs of wild dogs terrorize. Very visual but seemed to go on forever. Least favorite so far.

4th story. Jaws

Started out keeping track of these stories. Very strong writing and very strong images. My favorite is "Limbs:, loved the concept which I think could work in real life possibly and loved the human interest twist that appears. I can't say that I really liked any of the others, they were very strange, but as I said very visual but for the most part unlikable.
Unforgettable though for sure, doubt I will forget a one. Not sure if that is a good thing or not. Many are the stuff of nightmares or deranged minds?

Love the cover though.

ARC from publiisher

[Pixie · Rating 4 out of 5]

If they still teach southern lit at UGA, I hope they put this book on the syllabus. "Southern gothic" with a dash of satire, it's as if Wednesday Addams moved to the south and became a writer (and foodie -- the same sensibilities - as well as recurring themes - run through the different stories). Whether it is a kid in one of the stories, a narrator in another story, or the author overall, there is this irrepressible imagination and need to entrance a "captive audience" with outrageous tales. Some of the stories read more like chapters, and I would gladly have read them as whole books - I'm only afraid she will go on to something else and not finish those stories. But I'm excited to read whatever she comes up with next. Other stories, like the first one, show a perfect understanding of the short story form. Fantastic, and fantastical.

[Cristina Bracho Carrillo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Primer libro que publica en español la nueva editorial Horror Vacui, y menuda carta de presentación.

Los relatos de Julia Elliot te envuelven en un manto de desasosiego del que cuesta desprenderse incluso una vez cerrado el libro. A veces, los finales parecen quedar abiertos, pero cumplen su inquietante cometido con creces. Me ha encantado la intensidad de las descripciones, sobre todo en lo referente a ingerir carne o procesados, por afinidad de sensaciones. Un auténtico viaje sórdido y cruel por las entrañas más retorcidas de Norteamérica, que, en no pocas ocasiones, me recordaba a mi propia infancia en un pueblo andaluz donde las inclemencias del tiempo acentuaban la sordidez del comportamiento humano.

[Noelia Alonso · Rating 1 out of 5]

11 short stories. I enjoyed 3. I DNFed 5. The remaining 3 were okay. I knew they were gonna be bizarre but I guess I wasn't in the mood for this. A shame.

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Julia Elliott's The Wilds.

A fantastical collection of short stories, a Katamari ball of psychics, vegans, and other trendy pop-intellectual characters all fleshed out in the most cartoonish way. She loves the zany, media buzzwords. She's got an effusive vocab. It's all mouthwash green sneakers and disgusting can't-look-away reality tv-lit.

The Wilds was undercooked, I'd say. They were stories that you were interested in, but they came out all gooey, and pointless. Very shiny, not much under the hood. Regeneration at Mukti and Caveman Diet were almost the same story. She wants to gross you out with her vivid descriptions of fluids and bodies. But she doesn't. It just sounds like she's trying too hard.

I enjoy a good open-ended story as much as the next person. But they still gotta do something for you. They have to propose some kind of meaning and this meaning rockets right off the runway of rising action and you ride it and are okay to not see it land. These stories didn't do that. They didn't leave you with any final emotion.

I will say the last story, The End of the World, was great. Thoroughly cooked. It almost made me give the collection 3 stars. Almost.

[Elle Maruska · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved how absolutely, unapologetically gross this collection was. The author lovingly describes the disgusting details of being human, of being organic lifeforms, of being in love and growing up and growing old and trying to figure out how much of you is real and how much artifice. It's in the surgically disinfected that Elliott finds despair and disgust and it's in the acceptance of existence as disgusting and messy that her characters eventually find absolution. This was an amazingly unique collection of skin-crawling transcendence

[Jess ❈Harbinger of Blood-Soaked Rainbows❈]

Obsessed with this cover.

Obsessed.

[Michael Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whimsical, lyrical, effervescent prose. Imaginative storytelling that skirts between literary and speculative with a a sense of wonder and abandon. A charming collection, through and through.

[Marco Antonio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un compendio de relatos con el foco puesto en las relaciones de poder, interclase, interespecie. Una sensibilidad exquisita la de Elliot para explorar los márgenes donde sucede (sucederá, sucedió) ese intercambio, utilizando una narración furiosa pero sutil, un acecho, rabia de la que necesitamos. Imprescindible. Enhorabuena a la editorial por la publicación.

[Sally Balboa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like most people the cover is what drew me in, I mean it really is a cool thing that grabs your interest before you even know what the book is about. I'm glad to tell you that the book is equally as good, so feel free to judge a book by it's cover, this time.

The Wilds is a contemplation of short stories, ranging from sci-fi, strange romance, dystopian, normal, and some things that don't really have names because not enough people write about them. The stories all range at about 30-40 pages each. There are eleven stories total, and none of them follow each other, you'll be flooded with a whole new world with every story.

Characterization in this novel is complete, in a few pages we immediately know our characters, there moods, habits, and if they're particularly annoying of useful in anyway. It's refreshing.

The endings of all of most of the stories are open ended. It reminded me of reading the first chapter of a particularly long novel, and just knowing that things were going to get better. Unfortunately we never know anymore then the previous information. Perhaps its better that way though, our imaginations are our greatest treasures. This book lets us express them.

I'd like to compliment the author on her broad imagination. I mentioned before that there was quite a bit of differences between the stories. It's part of what made the book so interesting, to be a teenage girl avoiding a spanked by your parents because your father got annoyed, then being transported to being an old lady with robotic limbs, looking for your husband. It was like being submerged in water and then resurfacing somewhere new each time.

I liked almost all of the stories in this contemplation, the first three weren't really for me, particularly LIMBS, it just wasn't a story that caught my interest, there was nothing wrong with the writing, just not my taste. However my favorite was The Wilds. This one is about a girl with wild neighbors and a boy who wears a wolf mask during full moons. Good reading.

Almost all of the characters in the stories are girls, except for the genderless robot, but he does take on some feminine quality's for a while before deciding to become a man. So for a lot of this it's mostly appealing to women, it's talks about our feelings and habits quite a bit. It makes men romantic, or demoralizes them, but usually there's some sort of romance going on.

[Lisa]

Very lit-fic approach to speculative topics. Stories often ended at the most exciting/interesting part. There were two stories about people on weird health retreats, when one was quite enough. The whimsy of the cover felt misleading. Most characters were relentlessly unpleasant, their motives inexplicable to me. It was interesting to discover a fellow super-smeller writer, but Elliott focuses on ugly, toxic scents that are miserable to share. And I never thought of myself as averse to body horror, but Elliott describes so many blisters, pimples, and boils I felt nauseated.

The highlights were "LIMBs," about senior citizens whose new assistive technologies allow them to escape their nursing home; "The Love Machine," whose AI narrator was far more sympathetic than the human characters; and "The End of the World," about the reunion of a punk band, which had a surprisingly sweet romance hidden in it.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an incredible collection. While the very first story, "The Whipping," didn't quite hold my attention at first, I just skipped ahead to "LIMBs," which I can't help but think of as the cynical Millennial's answer to The Notebook, and loved. "Feral" was even better, if disturbing and more than a little gross. Then I hit what I think is my favorite story, "Jaws." I was cringe-laughing in horrified recognition in passages like this: "You plot a special blog entry called Racist Shit My Mother Says, jotting down her bons mots instead of passively sighing at the sadness of the world," and oh my god, every single monologue about food. Every story in the book is worth reading. One of my favorite books of the year!

As a professional bookseller I received a free advanced copy from the publisher.

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great collection--one I'm glad to have read before relinquishing most of my reading autonomy to the remainder of the semester. While there is a story named "Feral" in here, that's how the whole collection felt...gloriously so. I loved the snark and ribbing of post-industrial malaise while also wondering at the mess we humans have made. I appreciated the exploration of old age in "LIMBs" and "Jaws" and felt a particular pull from the primal, grimy thrum of youth in the title story. This collection is a cannier approach to magical realism, where reality often appears more fanciful than the marvels. According to the author note, Elliott will be publishing her debut novel this year, and I, for one, will be sure to get my paws on it.

*****
Counting as my short story collection for Book Riot's Read Harder challenge.

[Jenni · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories.

I thought this book was really beautifully written. There is definitely a certain dark intensity about all of the stories in this book. I had a few favorites, and there were a few I just found incredibly disturbing! It was still a very interesting and different read from anything I'v read lately. I wasn't crazy about how all the stories seemed to just end without any sort of resolution, but I think that was part of the point. It worked better from some stories than others in my opinion.

[Megan Dittrich-Reed · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't remember how this made its way to my TBR, but I'm sure glad it did! What a lovely, luscious, dark and twisted collection of stories. As a resident of the South and sci-fi/fantasy enthusiast, I really geeked out over Elliott's beautiful tapestry of Southern rural, dystopia, robots, and Gothic weirdness. I only marked it down a star because I felt like a couple of the stories had disappointing endings that made the rest of the story seem pointless, but overall, it was really, really good.

[Kris Y. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Qué difícil definir esta antología de relatos. Julia Elliott consigue sacudir al lector, mete la mano bien dentro de las entrañas y las retuerce con suavidad. El anhelo por esa parte más salvaje de la naturaleza humana se deja entrever en cada relato, aún con el correspondiente cambio de registro. Mis favoritos de la antología son “Feroz”, “El rapto” y “El fin del mundo”.

[BookishStitcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of short stories was so completely weird and creepy. I absolutely loved it!

[Book Riot Community]

I had such a hard time picking my favorite book of 2014 so I chose The Wilds based on which author I’d like to read again. The creativity and unbridled view of the future is beautifully done in this Southern Gothic short story collection. I was fascinated by a short piece in which the elderly main character receives the help of robotic legs as she struggles with past romances. Another short is a bit more down to Earth, yet not so grounded at the same time– a young girl goes on a slumber party and witnesses the death of a friend’s religiously zealous grandmother. This is wacky, bizarre content, but with a nice dose of realism even in the most absurd points. If you like Karen Russell, this is a good choice for you. Tin House Books published the book and I can appreciate this, as well. This collection has a nice shot of quirkiness in it that isn’t found everyday and Tin House is the perfect vehicle to bring Julia Elliott’s work to readers. What surprised me about this collection though was that it never felt like it was overly striving for a literary voice, which many short story collections are plagued with. Instead, it was something to be lost in. Of the books I’ve read this year, this one made me want to read more and I look forward to her novel in 2015. -Jessi Lewis

From Best Books of 2014: http://bookriot.com/2014/12/02/riot-r...

[Jed · Rating 4 out of 5]

moist

[Alberto Marcos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Los inquietantes -y a la vez sorprendentemente divertidos- cuentos de Julia Elliott están ambientados en un futuro preapocalíptico que parece inminente, un mundo donde las teorías de la conspiración, la tiranía de la tecnología, los efectos corrosivos del cambio climático y la decadencia de la civilización tal y como la conocemos en favor del retorno a un primitivismo cavernario, están transformando el mundo y nuestras vidas. Son distópicos de una manera demasiado cercana, porque las pandemias que han convertido el suelo que pisamos en una trampa mortal, las transformaciones que realizamos en nuestros cuerpos para huir del envejecimiento, la alienación de las relaciones personales en favor de una sexualidad egoísta y un individualismo feroz o la evolución de la inteligencia artificial como una nueva forma de esclavitud, nos resultan demasiado familiares.

El coqueteo de LO SALVAJE con la ciencia ficción y el terror es casi únicamente una caricia o un suspiro y, a la vez, lo suficientemente relevante para resaltar la crítica social propia de esos géneros. Pero además la autora mezcla la sátira moralista con lo extraño, y no escatima la imaginería propia del “body horror”, como hacía el primer Cronenberg en sus películas. Son relatos de atmósfera -pestilente, putrefacta, escatológica, increíblemente sensorial y bella en su detallada descripción de lo decadente-, y están
influenciados también por el origen sureño de la autora, con personajes y paisajes que parecen salidos de los universos de Flannery O’Connor o Carson McCullers, si estas hubieran escrito en la actualidad. Y, a la vez, el tono es irónico, y se apoyan en el humor excéntrico y adictivo de una Lorrie Moore.

No recuerdo haber leído algo así en mucho tiempo. Qué duda cabe que su lectura no será fácilmente digerible para muchos estómagos lectores, pero apela a todo lo que a mí me hace tilín: la literatura de género para aventureros sin miedo a explorar los recovecos más oscuros y malolientes de nuestro mundo. Porque estamos en pleno siglo XXI y seguimos siendo unos salvajes.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

These stories are bizarre, like a dream you might have where you aren’t sure if it’s a nightmare or not and then something completely absurd happens. You are caught off guard and start laughing and wake yourself up before the end, so you’re kind of annoyed, even though it was awful and you're also glad it's over. When you tell your dream to your spouse/roommate/partner/parent/child/first-person-you-see-when-you wake-up, you realize what you just shared was completely inappropriate and not actually as funny as your subconscious thought and you probably should have just kept it to yourself. Okay, maybe you don’t have those kinds of dreams, but I do.

Don’t read if you’re squeamish about pus or microscopic bacteria or meat. Don’t read if you really like meat.

Would I read this author again? Probably. Because despite these stories being arguably pointless and gross and disturbing, it is really good writing. I feel like the author is someone I would be friends with if our paths ever crossed.

[Lynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m torn between two and three stars because I liked the stories yet hated where they ended and actually thought to myself several times while reading this that maybe I don’t like short stories anymore...so probably two stars.