There Is No Escape.

Stories by Samantha Sewell

Published by Mother Mercury

Review by:  Worms Mag

Available on Strand Books, Barnes and Noble and Amazon

Current / Prior Sellers:

Small Print Books (Various, Los Angeles)

North Figueroa Bookshop (Highland Park, LA)

A Good Used Book (Echo Park, LA)

Des Pair Books (Echo Park, LA)

Stories Books & Cafe (Echo Park, LA)

Skylight Books (Los Feliz, LA)

Mast Books (East Village, NYC)

Human Relations (Bushwick, Brooklyn, NYC)

Books Are Magic (Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, NYC)

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Emma closes a door. Willie flirts with his neighbor. Joany contemplates water shoes. Raquel awaits the death of her parents. Pip pines for her cousin. Nadine measures proportions. Me, and you, and everyone else chain-smoke cigarettes while someone searches for an escape.

There Is No Escape. paints a series of intimate portraits, which reflect the age-old saying, “Wherever you go, there you are.” This anthology chronicles the lives of distinct characters as they undergo varying states of desiring escape from their lives. The stories capitalize on the paralyzing nature of inescapability in love, loss, aging, and the passing of time. By overlapping in theme, but standing alone in content, these stories showcase the oddly relatable aspects of life despite the lone quality of experience.

The following is an excerpt from “Me and You (and Everyone Else)”: 

"...I envy those who obsess over saving time, rather than spending or wasting, but those people are either disgustingly happy or otherwise raising children.

Saving, spending, not wasting—no matter the route, these are all just subversions from the moments when time starts to act on us. We are consumed with acting on time the way we so effortlessly did when we were young. Spending time spending time just to spend time or saving time to save time just to save time. Everything is boiling down to snapshots between and around each other—one spends time while the other saves, the two of them wanting something from time but nothing to do with each other.

If everything was everything for forever, time would not carry this much weight. Things would be slightly different for me. I would be one of those girls who posts dozens of pictures of herself, making the same blasé expression in the same boring, ugly-ironic outfit. Then, at the end of my life, I’d be content, left with hundreds of pictures of myself making the same face and wearing the same clothes. More fulfilling ways to spend the time would have never crossed my mind. Unfortunately, forever is a curious thing and I am not one of those girls. So instead, time eats me alive if I don’t find something to satiate its passing..."