To have written something this concise, this muscular, this moving and - yes, why not say it? - this eternal, seems little short of miraculous. But we have come to expect miracles from Johnson. In this age of plodding bandwagons and slavish imitation, Johnson is a one-hundred-per-cent authentic American original and an undisputed master of his craft
Rupert Thomson A masterpiece... one of the best prose writers in our time
Michael Ondaatje
Herald
I don't think there is a sentence in the book that isn't perfectly made
Ann Patchett
New York Times
A work of extraordinary power and consummate skill ... It is a miniature novel, that delineates an epic yet ordinary life in passages of often startling descriptive power. A masterpiece
Sean O'Hagan
Observer
Johnson might be one of America's greatest fiction writers... The denouement is written with such credibility that it fulfils the book's theme. Softly and beautifully, this novel asks a profound question of human life: is the cost of human society and so-called civilisation perhaps just too high?
Alan Warner
Guardian
One of America's greatest living fiction writers... Gently undulating and compelling... You can sit down and read it in one sitting - and you should
Fiona Wilson
The Times
A miraculously deft job... Beautifully done
James Walton
Daily Telegraph
Train Dreams has the same riveting duality as its extraordinary, ordinary hero... artfully constructed and rich in parabolic [and] paranormal possibilities... Bewitching
John Dugdale
Literary Review
We hold Denis Johnson to be one of the greatest Americans currently writing... a work of absolute towering genius
Stuart Hammond
Dazed and Confused
It will haunt me ever after... it resonates long and loud. The fact that this was on the shortlist for the Pulitzer Prize makes the jury's decision to withhold it all the more baffling. It should have won
Sam Jordison, Books of the Year
Observer
A spare stoic miniature of a particular sort of American life... a portrait of containment, of compression and restraint, from the most essential writer of his generation
LA Times
His writing is extraordinary - complex, beautiful, harrowing, astonishing in its power, and underpinned with a hard-worn humanity in the DNA of every sentence... exceptional on every level: ravaged, redemptive and utterly immersive. It is further evidence, if it were needed, of Johnson's unique and alchemical brilliance
Stuart Evers The great success of this work lies in its ability to move between vivid, muscular prose and hallucinatory poeticism - in many ways encapsulating all that is great about American literature. Train Dreams retains an authenticity and clarity... Beautifully proportioned
Port
The most powerful thing Johnson has ever written
Anthony Doerr
New York Times
Picked by the New York Times as a Notable Book for 2011 and described as "a small masterpiece", this novella tells the tragic story of Robert West, a day labourer in the American West at the beginning of the 20th Century.
Jacques Testard
Times Literary Supplement
The novella is 116 pages, but it is as rich, moving, and ambitious as any novel I read this year - and, because it is so compact, more powerful for it.
David Bezmozgis
The Millions
It's a love story, a hermit's story... It's also a small masterpiece. You look up from the thing dazed, slightly changed
New York Times
Extraordinary... simple yet lyrical... There is a haunting, elegiac quality to Johnson's writing that perfectly fits with the subject matter, giving Train Dreams the feel of a modern fable
Doug Johnstone
Big Issue
The natural world of the American West is examined, logged and frequently transfigured
James Wood
New Yorker
An immaculate distillation of a certain style of American fiction... Johnson delivers in hauntingly economical prose
Andrezej Lukowski
Metro
This is a short, excellent book, with a poetic quality that makes it oddly gripping
David Agnew
Skinny
Astonishingly gripping... Awe-inspiring and heartbreaking, exciting and humbling, this is a recommended read
Edinburgh Evening News
What sets Train Dreams apart is a lucid wisdom, a sense of perspective, a warm sustaining familiarity in the same ballpark as Richard Ford's Canada... sharp and clean, brilliant and surprising
Bookmunch
Stark and terse... all told with Johnson's maverick approach to grammar and structure
Simon Armitage, Books of the Year
Guardian
Johnson's writing is a joy
David Evans
Financial Times
The best [novel] I read this year... It's compulsive and, finally, unspeakably eerie
Nick Laird, Books of the Year
Guardian
This Pulitzer prize-winning author taps into a strain of Americana we find both familiar and appealing on this side of the pond
Belfast Telegraph
It has the feel of a modern fable, and is unbelievably moving... Extraordinary
Doug Johnstone, Books of the Year
Scotsman
You will have to keep stopping to recover from the assault of beauty, from the spare, clean prose that punches so far above its apparent weight, and from the tender perceptive description of a sad little life, which is not little at all. I do not understand why it is not everyone's favourite book of 2012... Extraordinary
Sara Maitland, Books of the Year
Scotsman
A concise yet epic slice of Americana of the unsweetened, affecting variety... Short it may be, forgettable it is not
Absolutely Chelsea
Its economy of language and force of emotion give Johnson's work a quick shot of intensity... Superb
Lesley McDowell
Independent on Sunday
Superb
Independent
Epic... Full of tenderness and wonder
Church Times
It's beautifully written - a miniature masterpiece
Ben Watt
Observer
The best book I read this year
Kate Pullinger
‘Books of the Year’ Observer
A beautifully balanced and lyrical novella in which an ordinary labourer [...] lives through some extraordinary times... An outstanding work
Paul Geatrix
Times Higher Education
Amazing
Anthony Doerr, summer books round up
Observer
Set in the American West at the start of the 20th century, this is the tale of a construction worker who, after losing his wife and daughter to a wildfire, lives as a recluse in the woods... It's a feat
100 Modern Novels to Love
Sunday Times