A middle-aged masochist in love with a comatose man. A gay birthday clown lamenting the loss of his beloved dog. An amateur veterinarian keeping watch over his suicidal daughter. And a bikini model with a barnacle stuck to her butt cheek. These are just a few of the characters who populate the quirky, offbeat world of If You Lived Here You d Already Be Home a world that feels at once alien and strangely familiar. In these 21 brief, funny stories, John Jodzio documents his characters disappointment, frustration, and longing for a home that seems forever out of reach. By turns bleak and hopeful, cruel and tender, this is an exciting literary debut by a writer to watch, a writer with a unique and compelling voice.
John Jodzio is a winner of the Loft-McKnight Fellowship. His stories have appeared in One Story, Barrelhouse, Opium, The Florida Review and various other places in print and online. His first book "If You Lived Here You'd Already Be Home" (Replacement Press) is now in print. He lives in Minneapolis. Find out more about John at www.johnjodzio.net
Here's some of what people have been saying about the book:
John Jodzio has a spare, dark, funny style that manages to be sardonic without forfeiting sympathy. That's really effing hard. -Dessa, Doomtree recording artist and author of Spiral Bound
John Jodzio's wonderful collection, If You Lived Here You d Already Be Home, is a set of colorful and seemingly fractured tales, each shining brilliantly alone, but also growing more vibrant as one story lays over another. Together they form an intricately stained glass window that looks out onto a whole new world. -Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief
You may think you've read enough stories about penniless gay clowns who can't get over the loss of a dog, but I assure you-you have not. John Jodzio is the best kind of modern fiction writer: a thematic traditionalist who feels totally new. -Chuck Klosterman, author of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs
Reviews:
Jodzio presents 21 tales of woe, yet he never insults the reader by feeling sorry for his characters, nor do his characters ever feel especially sorry for themselves. They're all dealing in good faith with a world that's gone horribly awry, all playing the crappy cards they've been dealt and making the best of their bad situations. --Marc Schuster, Small Press Reviews
Death, or the approach of it, abounds in If You Lived Here, yet the collection is far from morbid, and is, in fact, quite funny, as Jodzio's dark wit and pithy humor offer a pitch-perfect balance to scenes that, in the hands of a lesser writer, would verge on the sentimental, the cliché or the plain mean. Jodzio's reality is a cruel one, but he is not a writer who revels in this cruelty; rather he respects his characters, and manages to find beauty in even the most dire moments, to elicit empathy towards some of the most frigid beings imaginable. -Adam Gallari, The Millions
Perhaps what I liked the most about If You Lived Here You'd Already be Home...is that unlike most first-time collections it never feels like you're reading the same story over and over again...Here, each story is wholly unique and that makes it exciting to read because you never know what you're going to get when you turn the page. -Jodi Chromey, Minnesota Reads
The story collection sits well with most reading appetites; it's the all-purpose vintage. You have the sweet with the bittersweet, spicy humor with a dash of salty reality, Raymond Carver's meat and potatoes with George Saunders's surreal confections. But given the shifting tastes and flavors, Jodzio somehow manages to create a singular voice that is all his own -- never parody, but not quite straight talk either. -Britt Aamodt, MNArtists
Comprised of 21 short stories, If You Lived Here You'd Already Be Home is a wonderful look into a strange new world, one explored through the offbeat and bizarre lives of its characters. Though the stories vary greatly in length and subject, they share a combined sense of hopeful melancholia and bleak humor. -Ben Paulson, Magers & Quinn Citizen Review
