Krank: Love in the New Dark Times

by Sarah Sheard

This is a story of Time Travel. It is also Political Fiction.It's November 11th, 2009. Ainsley Giddings steps aboard a Toronto ferry to Ward's Island. A forties-something psychotherapist on a self-imposed writing retreat, she has sublet a cottage for a year.Unbeknownst to her, Berlin playwright Bertolt Brecht, astonished at being restored to life, is on that same ferry boat. Having died in 1956, his heyday was in Berlin in the 1930s. An anti-fascist playwright, his musicals made him a 'person of significance' to the Nazis. Suddenly, he has been brought back — given a second chance at life.Ainsley and he strike up a conversation on the ferry. What develops is a bizarre and eccentric love affair. Mixed into their affair are island airport politics and eventually a civic uprising in downtown Toronto — essentially the G-20 — which provokes a brutal repression by the police. This of course reminds Brecht of the 1930s resistance against Fascism in Berlin, especially when he is caught in the sweep by cops and thrown into a temporary jail with hundreds of others.Ainsley's exertions at translating modern life to Brecht while trying to remain resolutely apolitical lead to their escape to Berlin where time takes another astonishing and bizarre half-twist around these two mismatched lovers.

208 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 31, 2012

About the author

Sarah Sheard is an award-winning novelist living and working in Toronto. Her novels have been reviewed in The New York Times, Newsday, The Globe and Mail and others. Her novels have been translated into Japanese, Dutch, German, French and Spanish.
Her previous novels: Almost Japanese, The Swing Era and The Hypnotist. Her new novel is Krank: Love in the New Dark Times.

Reviews

[Sandra Bunting · Rating 4 out of 5]

Totally bizarre and I loved it. Set on islands set off the metropolis of Toronto, and fighting off encroaching development, the novel captures the unique bohemian character of the islands and their residents.
I saw in other reviews criticism that the lead character was weak. We have come to expect strong women fighting against the system, their domestic and romantic rights, kick ass warriors. This character, a Gestalt phycologist, was an a journey to understand herself by reflecting, researching and writing her experiences in relation to her chosen profession.
She tells us that on explanation of gestalt is making paper reality real, living in the moment. Through this she conjures a fascinating character of the past, beautifully portrayed along with sharp physical features and smell, quirks and talents and with interesting incites into the reality of what in happening in our times, and what we can learn from the past.
Both characters grow- the one from the past realizing that he had not foreseen the events of history he had lived through; the other having her eyes open to the lessons of the past and seeing the dangers
of that happening in the present/future - even in Canada, even in Toronto. And she started to practice what she preached.
I didn't much like the title Krank -illness in German - but it was perhaps mean to jar us and to be aware of the ills of our society.
Enjoyable book and perfect to read right through on a weekend. However, the themes and ideas in it will keep turning in our heads, making us think of our reality, and be aware.

[Carla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I had read Sarah Sheard’s three earlier novels more than 15 years ago, I only read this one recently, just after I re-read her other three books because they had left lasting impressions on me. I have to admit that this is my least favourite of the four novels but that is not because I did not like this title, merely because one book had to be ranked 4th and the others affected me emotionally. This novel, is however an imaginative, very intellectual book that is beautifully written, not in the evocative spare prose that Sheard used to great advantage in her earlier works but still in an appropriate style that did not waste the reader’s time yet packed Gestalt Therapy, Bertold Brecht, friendships, romantic relationships, the affect of governments, past and present, on civil rights and freedom into 200 pages that can be read in one or two sittings. I especially loved the opening scene on Toronto’s Ward Island Ferry and the closing scene in Berlin at the former home of Bertold Brecht.

[Mark D Swartz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I should start with some disclosure. The author, Sarah Sheard, is a fellow Torontonian. Back in 2000 I had purchased her novel of that time, The Hynotist . I was so intrigued by it that I looked Ms. Sheard up and phoned her - out of the seeming blue - to share my perspectives on that book.

It was the first and only time I'd ever done that. She graciously spoke with me for over an hour, and answered several questions I had about the plot and character consistency.

You can find my review of The Hypnotist here.

Fast forward to about 2013. Canada is experiencing a diminution of fundamental rights and freedoms, initiated by a federal government led by the Conservative Party, helmed by Steven Harper as Prime Minister. I attend a public literary reading and am seated by chance next to, yes, Sarah Sheard.

I'd recently read a write-up about her newest novel, Krank: Love in the New Dark Times. It had moved me to go and buy a copy. Suffice it to say I consumed it in a few breathless sittings. Note that in 2010 Toronto had hosted a meeting of the G20. Police officers engaged in questionably legal mass arrests that included hundreds and hundreds of innocents, with a number of accredited journalists also thrown into custody for good measure. Here. In sweet, relatively innocent Canada. Damn!

The thing about Krank, which employs magic realism to reanimate Bertolt Brecht in Toronto circa 2009, is that I loved how it addressed face-on the ugly wisps of fascism pervading the G20 fiasco. In real life a secret law was passed in the early morning, enabling police to arrest (and incarcerate immediately) anyone they deemed a possible threat. Preemptive arrests of potential agitators (read: students in their dorms) were made. Some police officers hid their identifying names and numbers. Virtually no authorities who'd said "Yeah, let's OK that " were held accountable.

Now back to Krank. The writing is typical of Ms. Sheard: intelligent, flowing and interesting. Peppered with terms that roll off the tongue for a clinical psychologist, as is the author's vocation. But...and it's a biggie, the same "but" I pointed to in The Hypnotist, the female protagonist, this time named Ainsley, is inexplicably pliant. Like soaking shmatah pliant. Let's a vagrant intrude, then subsume her life. Sure, it turns out to be Brecht re-manque. But did she know that before they'd shared a bed?

Brecht "warns Ainsley that he knows too well where these rumbles with state police can lead." Shades of Germany in the 30's, to where the couple is indeed transported.

I respect Ms. Sheard. She handles difficult subjects admirably. I simply yearn to see her feature a lead woman who follows her own groove, rather than one who flexes to the caprices of any Bertolt-come-lately.

[Sarah Mccarthz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just loved this book. A canandian author, headed on a ferry for an Toronto island retreat runs into Bertolt Brecht. THE Bertolt Brecht. And the two have hot chemistry radiating out of their every dialogue. Which is to say nothing of the sex scenes. Or the political climate... Sheard is artful in her creation of a rich and life-like realism that is full of feeling, yet never abandons the rhythm and clarity of good old fashioned story telling. All in the name of brightly woven fiction the story moves seamlessly from the highly theoretical to the deeply personal to the alienatingly political. Whether in a secluded cabin or a political rally, Sheard's protagonist--Ainsley--is at constant struggle and play with the tension between her needs as an individual and the context of the whole in which she finds herself. You really get the feel that the challenges she's up against, although both striking and admirable, are all together daily and deeply human. In the character of Brecht, Ainsley's equal and lover, you'll get all of the intelligence, romance, low-brow humanism and brooding mystery you could ever hope to find in a quasi-modern-day Heathcliff. Read. This. Book.

[Philip]

Beautifully written account of a partially time traveling love story. The historical Bertolt Brecht appears in modern day Toronto, disturbing the life of a psychotherapist who has moved to a small island to write a book. Plenty of symbolism but not being familiar with the playwright's work did leave me a little lost.

A bit of history mixed in but again the need to understand the strands of his life took away from the back story of political action, fascism in modern Toronto which was supposed I think to mimic the rise of fascism in Nazi Germany. I don't think this quite worked. But if you like semi-literary novels with a dash of romance and politics this is probably for you.