The Knife Sharpener’s Bell
Publisher Coteau Books/Wolsak & Wynn (2009)
ISBN 978-1-55050-408-8
Canadian Release Date September 2009
Annette Gershon’s odyssey from Depression-era Winnipeg to Stalinist Russia is both the seldom-told story of those who actually made that hopeful, doomed, journey, and a testament to the tenacity of the human spirit.
Ten-year old Annette Gershon is content enough growing up in her father’s delicatessen on Main Street in Winnipeg, but for immigrant families scratching out a living in the Dirty Thirties, even subsistence is a delicate balance, easily upset. Everything changes when her parents decide to take the family “home” to the Soviet Union.
Annette struggles to maintain her sense of who she is, first adapting to her life in Odessa, then fleeing to Moscow ahead of the Nazi occupation. But it is in the post-war years that her identity, and her very life, are threatened by the anti-Semitism of Stalinism’s final years.
The Knife Sharpener’s Bell is the story of a girl who tried to stop a train, but finds herself on the runaway train of historical events. It is a story about loyalty and betrayal, heroism and fear.
The writing is infused with a poet’s sensitivities to rhythm, image, and linguistic energy, yet also beautifully restrained – each image and observation there for a reason; the entire story hums with the tension that arises from the taut, athletic language.