Sarah Sheard
LYDIA COTTAGE PRODUCTIONS
My writing
"Sarah Sheard is a very funny and vivid and graceful writer about the human
condition."
-- Michael Ondaatje
Almost Japanese
A young girl's obsession with a famous Japanese musician blossoms into personal transformation.
In spare, lyrical prose, Sheard documents Emma's discovery of her new next door neighbour, a dazzling Japanese symphony conductor.
Things Japanese soon begin to transform Emma's world. Several years later, she must journey to Japan on a private pilgrimage to connect to the source of her obsession.
The Swing Era
A compelling story of a woman bound to her mother by all the familiar, complicated ties of love and obligation--and by a history of family madness that entrapped her lovely, willful mother and now haunts her own life.
As a child she learns--sometimes with comic results--to weave a web of protective secrecy around her chaotic and fragile household. Grown up, she returns home to discover what the boundaries are that separate mothers from daughters -- and in the process to define herself.
Wryly funny, compassionate, and deeply moving, The Swing Era is a novel about love and pain and the ties that bind.
The Hypnotist
Drawn together by mutual friends and a shared love of art, Signe, a talented photographer, and William, a psychiatrist, construct a private and passionate world of two.
From the beginning, William asserts subtle but firm control over Signe, while maintaining a discreet distance from her.
Driven by a need to penetrate the mystery of this man, Signe tries to crack the code to his carefully guarded world of hypnosis and psychotherapy.
Sarah Sheard employs her precise and evocative prose to tell a cautionary tale about the allure of romantic love - an intoxicating, but ultimately malevolent enthralment.
Krank: Love in the New Dark Times
Long-dead German playwright, Bertolt Brecht, finds himself reincarnated on the Ward's Island ferryboat in Toronto. He befriends island resident and psychotherapist Ainsley Gidding.
Mixing into their erotically charged affair are island politics and a civic uprising in down-town Toronto against a G- something Summit that evokes 1930s Berlin. Brecht is caught in the police sweep and thrown into a holding cell with hundreds of other civilians until Ainsley can spring him.
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Ainsley's exertions lead to their escape to Berlin where time takes another half-twist around these two mismatched lovers.
Past pierces Present in a startling conclusion that may help explain what brought Ainsley and Brecht together.
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