The most despicable shrink in the cosmos: Dr. Abner Krank (*snort!*)

Now, before anybody gets fired up, Dr. Abner Krank is a fictitional character; a weedy, sinister sort of man. He'll make your skin crawl from the moment he opens his mouth.

Dr. Krank, a 29-year-old chief resident of psychiatry (Twenty-nine? -- He's a child!) in a massive psych hospital in mid-1970s Toronto, is a key player in Nicholas Ruddock's The Parabolist, a mordantly madcap tale. I loved it.

Since the story's set in Toronto (which is a character in itself), everybody talks about the weather. Even though Toronto's micro-climate seems to be getting ever more monotonous and dreary (all those towers; all that concrete; all those metastasizing suburbs; bye-bye, green land and fresh air), it's still a Canadian city, so everyone talks about the weather, eh? (How can we not, really, no matter where we live -- especially now?)

But I digress. Dr. Krank is a character you will love to hate. He is utterly, irretrievably, an asshole. Poor bastard; with a name like Abner Krank, what can you do? You become a pompous ass. Scene:

Dr. Krank skewers an affable security guard whom he briefly encounters in a hospital lobby during a rainstorm. The guard compares the current weather -- a steaming, tropical downpour -- to Madagascar; Krank replies (typical shrink!) with a question:

Oh, you've been to Madagascar?

No, no, the friendly, hapless guard says; just a figure of speech. You know, Doctor, hot and wet.

Then that's all you should say, hot and wet. Madagascar means nothing to me. It's not helpful to say Madagascar. Madagascar could be on the moon.

You say so, Doc, sorry.

... Yech! What a creep! Valerie Anderson, a medical student, also has a first encounter with the illustrious Dr. Krank and later remarks,

How do people like that ever do anything for anybody? You know, there was a study of psychiatrists and it was found that eighty per cent chose their speciality because of vague inner turmoil, unhappiness, dissatisfaction. They're patients themselves, when it comes down to it.

GOOD ANSWER, VAL! I once was a therapist myself ... What matters down the line -- and is a bottom line for me -- is whether the practitioner keeps on doing his/her own inner work in supervision, no matter how long in practice. I don't care if your name is Freud or Jung, or if you're one of the masters' direct descendants -- If you're doing this work, you've got to be doing your work too. Here's why, in a nutshell (Take "nutshell" any way you please):

DR. ABNER KRANK'S PHILOSOPHY OF CARE, IN A NUTSHELL

When he first started [to administer psychotropic drugs to patients], he always went with the lowest dose, to be careful. Now, fuck it, wham, just get it done. Go back to sleep.

Fortunately, the wicked Dr. Krank is eventually challenged ... and that's all I'm going to say. The Parabolist struck me as a fast read -- but an intelligent one. It's a lush story of intersections, collisions, schemes and synchronicities.

A most erotic and timely anatomy lesson, beginning with an instep, awaits you, reader! So does a bemused older gentleman who becomes sweetly -- then staunchily -- infatuated with a family of squirrels who are nesting somewhere in his roof. So does a revolutionary -- and ravishing -- poet who is not who he seems ... His presence as a teacher of poetry to medical students needing a quick elective credit is shape-shifting ...

There's someone in the story who's considered a failure. We all know where that one goes ... and here, it goes with deep grace and full-circle fun.

The story is full-circle humane ... It's so refreshing to read a novel that isn't overwrought with cynicism ... Oh, and by the way? Poetry rocks.

A couple of blurbs that nicely sum up The Parabolist:

A comic mystery, literary CSI, old-fashioned sex romp or CanLit tease -- you needn't be able to say what Nicholas Ruddock's The Parabolist is, because it speaks so entertainingly for itself.

(Andrew Pyper)

Packed with smarts, wit, and the spirit of Roberto Bolano, The Parabolist envisions Toronto as an antic place full of characters willing to go to the brink for good sex, good love, or a good poem. This big-brained, warm-hearted debut is a joy to read right up to its bold conclusion.

(Kyo Maclear)