About the Author

Sean Ennis is the author of Chase Us: Stories (Little A) and his fiction has appeared in Pithead Chapel, Wigleaf, Maudlin House and Diagram. More of his work can be found at seanennis.net He lives in Mississippi.

Reviews

“The first time I met Sean, we were splitting cigs by these repainted McDonald’s coil spring rockers at this writing residency. I was awed by his writing in those workshops then and I’m equally awed by his writing now. Cunning, Baffling, Powerful is a wild, but equally empathetic collection of seven stories of hard luck people in treatment gritting through the process, buoyed by their behind-each-other’s-backs backstories and whisper-thin relationships based on what they know about one another’s drug of choice, hard stuff or candy-coated. The experience of reading this collection is not unlike smoking a cigarette. Sean’s writing sends a jolt to the pleasure center of your brain, although you also know there’s a good chance you’ll hurt in the end. But you can’t wait to sneak the next one, the disagreeing faces of passersby judging you for waving it around in public like that.”

—Gene Kwak, author of Go Home, Ricky!

In Sean Ennis’s harrowing and hilarious chapbook, the first-person plural “we” narrators are reluctant members of a club to which no one wants to belong: addicts and alcoholics, strong-armed into rehab. This hapless chorus kvetches, whines, pity-parties; they squabble over candy, the poor substitute for their drugs of choice. In group therapy, they tune each other out, or jockey over who has the best (worst) hitting bottom story. They battle long odds. “Rehab is exhausting, almost as exhausting as addiction. Before, there was scheming, fighting, hiding. Now it’s sharing, helping, waking.” In turns funny and melancholy, Cunning, Baffling, Powerful is a candid, engrossing book by a master of flash fiction at the top of his form.

—Kim Magowan, author of How Far I’ve Come

A compelling look at post-detox life in a halfway house set deep in the woods where the residents are far from temptation and will learn to live again without using. The everyday-ness of group therapy, the trips to Walgreens, the quirks and ironies of the various residents come to life in Ennis’ sharp prose. We get a close-up of the routines of readjustment all the way to the inevitable question they face at the end of this journey – “what now?” Each story focuses on a facet of life in this in-between space with Ennis turning it under the light with a jeweler’s eye. These stories are quick-moving and filled with great characters and important insights. A really terrific read.

—Francine Witte, author of Just Outside the Tunnel of Love.