“Sarcastic, self-destructive, yet strangely endearing, Edward Dacres is the best kind of anti-hero—the kind you can’t forget. Who’d have thought a book about art and Toronto would be a page-turner? And yet it is, as we watch, riveted, to see if Dacres is going to fail or succeed. In crystalline prose, and with affectionate satire, Tarnopolsky deftly leads the reader forward, and twists this tale of a down-and-out British painter into a glorious celebration of life’s simpler beauties.”
—Miguel Syjuco, author of Ilustrado
“Because it’s always saying something about the here and now, historical fiction with a satirical edge can sometimes wickedly reveal how little things can change … Tarnopolsky makes much black humour of [protagonist] Dacres’s excruciating ways … Finely wrought.”
—The Globe and Mail
“Clever, achingly funny, perfectly calibrated, in that terrain between the farcical and the poignant—I read it in a day.”
—Joan Thomas, author of Reading by Lightning
“Tarnopolsky displays great command over Dacres’s character, slowly revealing the tragedy that turned him into a misanthrope even while dramatizing the ways in which he alienates the people who cross paths with him … Goya’s Dog is a compelling story of an artist at war with himself.”
—Quill & Quire
“Tarnopolsky’s style is essentially witty: it combines observation and action in a way that is so elegant, so articulate and yet light of touch that one is hardly aware of its complexity. And he has made a book about a troubled person and a particularly turbulent place in history, a book about Canada as seen by an Englishman, a book about art and war and desire, that is both funny and sad.”
—Russell Smith, author of Muriella Pent
“Darkly hilarious … Damian Tarnopolsky’s meticulously weighted prose creates a vivid impression of his protagonist.”
“I was most struck by the sustained excellence of [Tarnopolsky’s] prose. There is a deftness to his sense of pace and imagery that we associate with writers very much at home with their craft … As a historian I often dislike fiction set in the past, because the author’s sense of history is usually so bad. I didn’t have this feeling at all with [Tarnopolsky’s] deft recreation of Toronto, which seemed to me admirably minimalist … I don’t envy any younger writer, of either fiction or non-fiction, trying to make a way in this time of breakneck change, but I certainly do envy his talent.”
—Michael Bliss, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto
Praise for Lanzmann and Other Stories
“In his debut story collection, Tarnopolsky often writes like a dazzling fallen angel. I listened to Tarnopolsky plucking at my shopworn critical synapses, and asked why he made them sing in a way several prize contenders haven’t. The answer is that he’s a truly new voice, delivered with a rare panache.”
—The Globe and Mail
“[Tarnopolsky’s stories] not only display an ironic sensibility, but also demonstrate a prose style that owes much to the influence of Kafka … At turns surreal, serio-comic whimsical and erotic, Tarnopolsky’s stories hurtle headlong into the heart of our myths … and reveal that the truth waiting for us is not what we’d expect.”
—Toronto Star
“Tarnopolsky writes perfect, twisty sentences … there’s authority, Nabokovian play and bawdiness to these tales … And if this desperately earnest town needs one thing, it’s satire that takes itself seriously.”
—eye weekly
“Tarnopolsky loves his characters for their flaws, not despite them, and the reader too is compelled … The characters are finely fleshed out, the dialogue is fluid and believable, and the structures are clever and interesting … proof of Tarnopolsky’s skill, insight and wit.”
—Quill & Quire
“Smart and funny and crass and intelligent. There is sour humour in these stories and bitter discovery. Tarnopolsky is full of form and new feeling. Highly recommended.”
—Michael Winter
“Full of sex and music, cynicism and beauty, absurdity and perfect order, cities and conversation and diversity, Tarnopolsky’s elegant stories are darkly brilliant reflections of our darkly glittering age.”
—Stephen Marche