Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Chase Us: Stories
    Chase Us: Stories
    Chase Us: Stories
    Audiobook5 hours

    Chase Us: Stories

    Written by Sean Ennis

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In this beautifully imaginative collection, young people attempt to negotiate the often surreal terrain of childhood and adolescence where family, friends, clergy, and teachers often pose a threat instead of providing safe harbor. At the heart of the collection is the relationship between the meek narrator, his best friend alpha-male Clip, and the near-feral Roger but there are also agoraphobic mothers, gorgeous babysitters from New Zealand, paranoid stoned veterans, and deeply sad older sisters.

    Ennis has crafted modern-day captivity narratives, set not at some remote fort, but in the neighborhoods of Philadelphia. Using cinematic imagery and deft characterization, Ennis explores how we often feel confined and yet find ourselves in places we least expect.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateMay 27, 2014
    ISBN9781480585256
    Chase Us: Stories
    Author

    Sean Ennis

    Sean Ennis has been published in Tin House, The Mississippi Review, Pindeldyboyz, Fifty-Two Stories, The Good Men Project, The Greensboro Review, and Best New American Voices. He teaches creative writing at the University of Mississippi.

    Related to Chase Us

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Do Sex Dolls Dream of Electric Sheep? On Alissa Nutting’s ‘Made for Love’

      Jul 5, 2017

      Let’s just put it out there: go read this book. The post Do Sex Dolls Dream of Electric Sheep? On Alissa Nutting’s ‘Made for Love’ appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Lisa Halliday

      Dec 12, 2018

      It has been a year of reading in fits and starts, indeed of doing everything in fits and starts, fits and starts being the general run of things when you have a baby. For articles I was writing, I happily revisited passages from several books, includ

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Magician Who Catches Card Cheats In Casinos: ‘It’s Incredibly Common For People To Try’

      Jun 23, 2023

      Every morning when Harry Milas wakes up, he sits at his desk and picks up a pack of playing cards. He starts every day by dealing “seconds” – dealing out the second card in the deck, rather than the top card – then “thirds” and “bottoms” (just what i

      5 min read

    • Article

      Snatched From The Street

      Oct 1, 2020

      Climbing on his bike, 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling felt very grown up. It was 9pm on October 22, 1989, and he was about to cycle down to the local convenience store to rent a video with his younger brother Trevor, 10, and their friend Aaron, 11. His

      3 min read

    • Article

      Paltry Gestures

      Jan 5, 2021

      Paltry Gestures
      6 min read

    • Article

      Writing, Still Writing

      Apr 21, 2021

      Maybe the point is that we writers should appreciate writing for the very way it keeps us trying, keeps us dreaming. The post Writing, Still Writing appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Daughters’ Bodies

      Dec 1, 2019

      WHEN I’M about to go away to college, my grandmother dies and my mother silently puts herself up for adoption. LOOKING FOR SOMEONE TO ADOPT ME: Kind, lonely, beautiful woman in her 50s. Dead husband. No children. Cooks and cleans. 4’11 and 90 lbs. Gu

      20 min read

    • Article

      Ribs, Muscle, Bone

      Jan 7, 2020

      Ribs, Muscle, Bone
      10 min read

    • Article

      Nuclear

      Oct 7, 2021

      Nuclear
      7 min read

    • Article

      Advent ANGEL

      Nov 8, 2023

      Advent ANGEL
      6 min read

    • Article

      Lineal Gaps

      Apr 6, 2021

      Lineal Gaps
      15 min read

    • Article

      Counter Waves

      Oct 23, 2020

      Counter Waves
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Problem with My Dachshund

      Dec 11, 2019

      The Problem with My Dachshund
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Workbench

      Dec 23, 2020

      The Workbench
      6 min read

    • Article

      Lies I Tell My Father

      Feb 10, 2024

      “How’s your job at the newspaper?” my father asks me. He is sitting on a couch, a plush throw blanket spread across his legs. “The newspaper’s fine,” I lie. I lie because it is simple. I lie because it is quick. I lie because it is easier than trying

      10 min read

    • Article

      A Last Look Around

      Dec 4, 2020

      A Last Look Around
      5 min read

    • Article

      Shanda

      Jan 1, 2024

      Shanda
      13 min read

    • Article

      Coming To Terms

      May 25, 2021

      Coming To Terms
      14 min read

    • Article

      Daisy And The Doodler

      Aug 7, 2019

      Daisy And The Doodler
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Space Between Us

      Oct 9, 2019

      The Space Between Us
      8 min read

    • Article

      In The Place Of Our Parents

      Oct 13, 2017

      In The Place Of Our Parents
      11 min read

    • Article

      DON’T GO INTO The Cellar!

      Jan 21, 2020

      DON’T GO INTO The Cellar!
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Picture

      Dec 18, 2020

      The Picture
      6 min read

    • Article

      Guests

      Jun 15, 2019

      The month after our mother died, our father began bringing women home. It felt like a behind-her-back kind of operation. “I’m going to have a guest over tonight,” is what he would say. David and I stayed out in the living room, turned up cartoons, bu

      11 min read

    • Article

      My First Pet

      Feb 2, 2020

      My First Pet
      9 min read

    • Article

      Part 2 SOCKS

      Apr 1, 2022

      Part 2 SOCKS
      7 min read

    • Article

      Advent

      Nov 22, 2018

      Advent
      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Chase Us

    4/5

    2 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Chase Us, the new collection of short stories by Sean Ennis, reads like a dream. That is to say, many of the 11 stories individually – and the collection as a whole – present so many unexpected twists and are so free of telegraphing and build up, are so immediate in their presentation of drama, and are so full of surprises, that the effect is what you might imagine it would be like if you could jump into someone’s dreaming mind. It is an impressive, fearless collection.This is a series of stories in which the same characters appear, age from childhood to adulthood, and move, primarily, through the same part of suburban Philadelphia. But beyond that, the characters are unpinned from the constraints of reality. The characters reappear, but are sometimes recurrent in name only – their behaviors, their histories -- don’t carry consistently from one store to another. There is, in many of the stories, a logic that defies the logic of our real world: A mother takes up residence in a greenhouse erected in a living room; boys form gangs and grow feral around an endless wall ball competition (it’s Lord of the Flies with tennis balls); mothers and sons go to war with each other (the sons wielding kickballs, tennis balls and bows and arrows, the mothers charging forward with cell phones held high); kids kidnap one another in local parks with no consequence besides eventual boredom. Yet, in the world of the stories, that skewed logic is never questioned, it makes perfect sense – just like a dream.This is an amusing, entertaining set of stories. Yet the overall effect is not light and the abundant humor is a dark humor. Ennis employs his skill as a scene builder and his unique style as a storyteller to deliver a distinctive world view oscillating between real and surreal without explanation, leading us through a dystopian present into a slow motion apocalyptic future with tee ball and recounted with fatalistic frankness by a narrator who remains wryly perplexed by it all. It is a world view running deeply with a sense of disconnectedness and loneliness. The world of Chase Us is really two worlds existing in parallel: the world of children and the world of adults. The children are bored and lonely and scared. The adults are angry, defeated, largely unaware of, and seemingly uninterested in, the experiences of their children. Reading Chase Us, I had to pause and look at my own children as they ran with their friends, appearing to have fun, and wonder just what world they are living in. What fears, what ambitions, what risks, challenges, desires and failures rule their minds? Can I know and would they tell me if I asked?So often children form connections with each other first by happenstance, not by choice. Childhood friendships begin as the by-product of proximity. And what American child really has the choice to leave even when things are bad? “Run,” the narrator’s father tells him at the end of the opening story. It’s his opportunity for escape, but he doesn’t take it. By the final story in the collection the narrator has grown into an adult himself; a father striving to do a better job for his child than his adults did for him. “It should be clear by now,” he says to us, “that I spend a lot of time trying to make everyone else happy. It’s not clear to me what would make me feel that way.” It’s a question we all could ask ourselves – we former children who are now adults: are we here by choice or are we captives; do we know how to make the others in our lives happy; do we know how to build happiness for ourselves? Are we connected to one another as it sometimes appears or are we more alone than we think?Chase Us resonates. I finished reading the book months ago. I’m still thinking about it, still feeling it.