Every Night I Dream I'm a Monk, Every Night I Dream I'm a Monster

by Damian Tarnopolsky

A risk-taking, labyrinthine, and absolutely original collection of short stories.

Every Night I Dream I’m a Monk, Every Night I Dream I’m a Monster offers an unfolding puzzle of the human psyche that is at once explosive, funny, dark, sweet, pained, and utterly strange. 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 spanning from 1980s England to Renaissance France to present-day Canada to a world yet to come.

Each tale stands alone in its stylistic direction, only to 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.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

272 pages, Paperback

Published September 3, 2024

About the author

Damian Tarnopolsky’s most recent book is Every Night I Dream I’m a Monk, Every Night I Dream I’m a Monster. His work has been nominated for many awards, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Amazon First Novel Award, and the Journey Prize, and he won the Voaden Prize for Playwriting in 2019. He teaches at the Narrative-Based Medicine Lab at the University of Toronto. His chapbook, "A Friend to Words," was published by espresso chapbooks in 2025.

Reviews

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review to come.

Here it is:

https://miramichireader.ca/2025/06/ev...

[Leslie Ordal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this complex collection of linked short stories. It's pretty wide ranging, from historical fiction to drama to dystopian, but the author does a fine job regardless of genre. For those struggling to find the connection between each piece, it can be quite subtle (and for me was part of the fun in figuring out how each one is connected). As with most short story collections, there are hits and misses--I adored Like Triumph, Big Fuzzy Sweater, and Turtles, whereas Handcuffs seemed to suffer especially due its position right after the superlative Hucket's Technic (the best in the collection, in my opinion, and well worth the price of admission on its own). Overall, a solid collection, and something to pick up if you like short stories and adventurous writing.

[Rob Forteath · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of the stories are very well-written, and at least somewhat interesting and/or thought-provoking. I didn't get anywhere trying to piece together the tenuous overall universe of the collection. Mark and Bella and others pop up repeatedly, but often in name only, without giving us much of an idea why the particular story applies to them.

And it is hard to care about them. Stories told from the point of view of Mark, while in a delusional state, just make us suffer.

After the halfway point, I found my only interest was in the writing style. The content became increasingly uninteresting. I'm not even sure that this was conceived as a cohesive universe, because it seems more like a bunch of unrelated stories that were tacked together.

[Kathy Brown]

I don't do stars, but highly recommend for lovers of tightly written, thoughtful, and challenging literary short stories. I have a review on my website, kathylbrown.com.

[Elizabeth Niedra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This set of stories is more than what has been marketed, and what has been described elsewhere.

What at first looks to be a dizzying, deliberate mess of short stories with a thinly linking timeline thread - one thinks of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, but told through two generations of a single family - is in fact be a single story of a deeper growth and reckoning. What emerges through these pages is a central arc of existential exploration, marked by uncomfortably familiar frustration, self-obsession, futility - and, ultimately - a satisfying, necessary release. Read this way, it is wonderful. It leaves one with many thoughts about the ugly pain of being imperfect; of enduring, and fearing the limits of, existing. Some earlier stories are uncomfortable but one feels intentionally so, in their brooding, ascending angst. I faintly critique some middle moments which seem to try to deconstruct and shock; though these beats are not necessarily the book's most interesting.
Climactic stories Hucket's Technic and Laud We The Gods are particularly brilliant, as unflinchingly human as they are philosophically tragic. They play on the mind long after, and, in the moment, read beautifully.

Tarnopolsky has jokingly referred to himself as a writer's writer's writer's writer. Indeed, a creative heart will find a friend in this book's unforgiving meditation on seeking. But, I don't think you need to be a writer to pick up this book and enjoy its prose, and its astute, sinister musings.

[Alison Gadsby · Rating 5 out of 5]

It may be impossible to describe the latest collection of short stories from Damian Tarnopolsky without using all the adjectives, but I will start by saying it should be read by every new short story writer who is worried about following rules.

EVERY NIGHT I DREAM I’M A MONK, EVERY NIGHT I DREAM I’M A MONSTER ( @freehandbooks ) is a masterclass in the short story. Filled with self-referential, metafictional, provocative, sexually gorgeous stories and characters who are dishonest cheaters and foundling children, there is a short play, a monologue, a short story with the writer’s sister’s notes, a writing prompt from a professor named Damian Tarnopolsky, and more that goes to show there are no rules!

ENIDIAM, ENIDIAM is proof that when you allow your creative mind to wander into the depths, you can create a work of stimulating prose so mind-bending it will be talked about for decades.

Read and find a way to give it five stars because the writing deserves all the stars!

[Jonathan Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of short stories is a great example of how collections like this are (like the best music albums) at their best when there is a great deal of variety in the tones, themes, and characters, as opposed to them all being similar, which can cause the book to drag and boredom to set in. Instead, Tarnopolsky does a fantastic job of taking the reader on a ride full of emotional wonderment, sex, existential crisis, longing, and more. Some personal favourites of mine include the stories, Bed, In Spain, Dumbo, and Handcuffs. As for the writing itself, it is precise with few instances of excessive exposition, with dialogue that often jumps off the page. It is abundantly clear that the author took their time to ensure that the words used are the best ones, and the book is all the better for it. I would definitely recommend this collection to anybody who is a fan of literary fiction with a series of jolts of entertainingly abrasive thought.

[Emi Yoshida · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author classifies this highly prized book of short fiction to be linked stories, and I recognized character names repeated from story to story, but struggled to find cohesion. The only consistencies I could gather were that Mark's sister Bella died, and he was never as close with their younger sister Laura, that perhaps due to that loss he struggles to end relationships with women, and for no reason I could discern his male friends are flawed. Or maybe that's from the lack of a father figure?

Truly Damian Tarnopolsky does make each piece unique here, from location and time setting to incorporating each piece of a coat of armor. I'm not sure if it's the experiential nature of the writing that I found jarring, or if it was the ambiguity of story shards and innuendo. I got the feeling this is so too much for itself that the title doesn't even fit on its cover.

[Reet Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damian Tarnopolsky's Every Night I Dream I'm a Monk, Every Night I Dream I'm a Monster is a brilliant collection of interconnected life stories, with Mark Ferguson's journey at its core. The non-linear narration cleverly masks these stories as independent pieces, but reoccurring symbols, like a Habsburg cup, reveal the intricate connections. Tarnopolsky blends genres, from sci-fi to romance, creating richly layered characters who embody both monks and monsters at different points in their lives. It’s a complex puzzle that rewards a second read, where clues fall into place in a spectacular, satisfying way.

Highly recommended.

[Enid Wray · Rating 2 out of 5]

These stories just didn’t resonate with/for me. There was nothing that even remotely had me caring.

Yes, they are linked - most featuring one or more recurring characters - but they are incoherent as a collection.

I really disliked the conceit of the structure of the story titled “A Whole Fresh Carapace” - especially the ending.

Then there is the story titled “Handcuffs.” Well, even if I could figure out the point to this, it was just crude… and not what I care to be reading.

If it hadn’t been so close to the end I’d have DNF’d this collection at that point.

[Bruce Geddes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damian Tarnopolsky is a crafty writer and this collection is excellent, start to finish. My favourite was "Turtles" the opener but all had something great to offer.

[Dan Jakel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A series of short stories that contain clever, upscale writing with irreverent twists. A thoroughly entertaining read I say.