“Sparks that reach far into the past and spin toward the future”: The Historical Turn in Recent Novels by Susan Glickman, Nancy Richler, and Rhea Tregebov

ABSTRACT:Susan Glickman’s The Tale-Teller (2012), Nancy Richler’s Your Mouth Is Lovely (2002), and Rhea Tregebov’s The Knife Sharpener’s Bell (2009) are as invested in Canada as in the historical and cultural past. In each novel, to counterpoint the oppression, imprisonment, and extreme hardship of the Old World, Canada serves literally as a safe haven and figuratively as a harbor of freedom. This essay shows how Glickman, Richler, and Tregebov respectively deploy catalyzing historical events in an effort to amplify their understanding of the cultural past and the Canadian present. The cultural contingencies of present-day Canadian life have given rise to a transnational probing of profound historical complexities, which may be apprehended—though never resolved—through narrative exploration of Jewish identity.