Every Night I Dream I'm A Monk, Every Night I Dream I'm A Monster
Damian Tarnopolsky
-offers an unfolding puzzle representing the psyche that is at once explosive, funny, dark, sweet, pained, and utterly strange.
THE BOOK
From the tangled threads of a messed-up family to the timeless themes of consciousness, love, art, and death, Damian Tarnopolsky’s narrative journey takes readers through past, present, and future, with stories ranging from 1980s England to present-day Canada alongside visions of Renaissance France and worlds yet to come.
Each tale stands alone and takes its own stylistic direction, but they connect and reflect back on each other in unexpected, touching, and sometimes jarring ways. As characters from different times and places converge, the result is a mosaic of emotions and insights that mirror the complexities of a self in time.
With echoes of Chekhov, Olga Tokarczuk, and Jennifer Egan, this is a collection that transcends the boundaries of traditional storytelling, offering a glimpse into the workings of human relationships, inheritance, and experience.
PRAISE
“With Every Night I Dream I’m a Monk, Every Night I Dream I’m a Monster,
Damian Tarnopolsky has crafted one of the most intriguing, original pieces of fiction you are liable to read this year.” ROBERT J. WIERSEMA, Quill and Quire, starred review
“Wistful, dark, and complex, Damian Tarnopolsky’s Every Night I Dream I’m a Monk, Every Night I Dream I’m a Monster is an idiosyncratic journey through all the messy, disparate, and contradictory parts of being, or becoming, a person.” JEN RAWLINSON, Hamilton Review of Books
“I loved this short story collection so much. It’s by Torontonian Tarnopolsky, a novelist and playwright, and it gradually unfolds as interconnected stories that are beautifully varied.… Taken together they form a most fascinating picture of a life unfolding, fitfully and gradually.” TRISH TALKS BOOKS
“A remarkable collection that deserves attention… The prose is dense, tightly curled in on itself like the petals of an unbloomed flower, whorled around its inner secrets and logic . . . [with] jet-black gems of humour, glittering in the storm of words, and moments of shocking beauty… I have enormous respect for the work, and especially the way Tarnopolsky has marched to his own drum, for taking risks in the prose, for burrowing into the human psyche in a human submersible of his own design.” EMILY WEEDON, The Seaboard Review
“I think I should just straightforwardly say Every Night I Dream… is an amazing experience that all fans of short literary fiction will want to read… Is it sad? Tragic even? Yes, but also funny and touching… Each story in the collection is a crafty clue to a bigger tale that the reading audience must puzzle out for themselves. Consider another, perhaps more likely analogy: the book is a corkboard covered in crime scene photos, bits of evidence, and red string with which the reader can tie together the picture of a family’s demise. It’s an interactive and engaging process, and much like a dream, is told in symbolic bits and pieces… I recommend this collection for readers who appreciate fine writing and complex characters. If they are willing to dive into this immersive tale, they will be rewarded.” KATHY L. BROWN WRITES
“I’ve never read anything quite like this book. It’s a gem whose facets seem familiar until you turn it slightly and find it refracting in a completely unpredictable way: by turns searching, scary, and humane.” CRAIG DAVIDSON, author of Cataract City
“Monk/Monster is a connected series of painful and amazing stories. One story concerns a job interview, a pistol, and a confused narrator just clinging to sanity, all told in a torrential stream of consciousness prose, a pleasing chaos, like Nabokov on acid. Often the reader is deep in a character’s head, yet outside watching and gathering clues. Nothing is spelt out and old family lore hovers; the effect is comic and chilling and the writing is artful and very impressive.” MARK ANTHONY JARMAN, author of 19 Knives
EVENTS
-August 27th, 7pm: Vancouver Launch: Upstart and Crow
-September 12th, 6pm: Mississauga: Ampersand Review Reading Series
-October 22nd, 7pm: Launch, presented by Toronto Lit Up:
My House in the Junction
2882 Dundas St. West, Toronto, ON M6P 1Y8
-October 29th, 6pm: Toronto: Drunk Fiction
-November 5th, 7pm: Zoom: The Writers' Union of Canada Open Mic Night
-November 10th, 6:30pm: Toronto: Junction Reads
-November 19th: Vaughan: Civic Centre Resource Library
-December 1st, 7pm: Toronto: Bright Lit Big City
-January 22nd, 6pm, Mississauga: Ampersand Review Reading Series
-April 4th: Toronto: Angel Reading Series
LIKES etc.
-Every Night… is a Hamilton Review of Books Best Book of 2024
-Robert J. Wiersema gives Every Night… a starred review in Quill and Quire
-Toronto Lit Up selects Every Night... for inclusion in fall launch series
-All Lit Up features Every Night… in their Holiday Reading Edit
-Every Night… listed in Read Alberta’s Eight Alberta Books That Don’t Follow the Rules
-The Globe and Mail includes Every Night... on their list of books to read this season
-CBC lists Every Night... as one of the
Canadian books they're most excited to read in September
-and one of their
CBC Short Story Prizewinners and Finalists publishing books in 2024
-49th Shelf mentions Every Night… in their Most Anticipated: Fall Preview