As If Place Matters

by Paul Juhasz

208 pages, Paperback

Published November 30, 2023

Reviews

[Molly Sizer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Time and place collide in these short stories. Whether by bad choices or simply bad fate, people’s paths cross and pain happens. These people do not feel like fictional characters living in fictional places; they could be my duplex neighbor, the cashier at my local grocery story, or my favorite--the Uber driver giving me a ride home. The structures of the stories are complexly woven and engaging, watching life happen from multiple points of view. One of the three best books I’ve read this year.

[Benjamin Myers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Juhasz's prose style is crisp and muscular, literary but with an enlivening element of pulp. These stories are dark and mostly focus on randomness, chain-reaction, and cause-and-effect. This is a book full of collisions. It is a compelling, sometimes disturbing, and always thought-provoking book by a writer who knows how to tell a story.

[Cody Baggerly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful. Haunting. Real.

Juhasz has a distinct and rare talent to show us, his audience, the raw and real consequences of embracing our worst impulses. This collection of short stories emphasizes this message by taking a look into the darkest hearts of humanity and exploring the effects of environment and circumstance that contribute to the choices we make, whether mundane or grand, that ultimately control who and what we are.

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

These short stories are written by a brilliant writer- master of many voices.