Bellevue Square

By: Michael Redhill

Narrated by: Sarah Mennell

Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist

A darkly comic literary thriller about a woman who fears for her sanity - and then her life - when she learns that her doppelganger has appeared in a local park.

Jean Mason has a doppelganger. She's never seen her, but others swear they have. Apparently, her identical twin hangs out in Kensington Market, where she sometimes buys churros and drags an empty shopping cart down the streets, like she's looking for something to put in it. Jean's a grown woman with a husband and two kids as well as a thriving bookstore in downtown Toronto, and she doesn't rattle easily - not like she used to. But after two customers insist they've seen her double, Jean decides to investigate.

She begins at the crossroads of Kensington Market: a city park called Bellevue Square. Although she sees no one who looks like her, it only takes a few visits to the park for her to become obsessed with the possibility of encountering her twin in the flesh. With the aid of a small army of locals who hang around in the park, she expands her surveillance, making it known she'll pay for information or sightings. A peculiar collection of drug addicts, scam artists, philanthropists, philosophers, and vagrants - the regulars of Bellevue Square - are eager to contribute to Jean's investigation. But when some of them start disappearing, she fears her alleged double has a sinister agenda. Unless Jean stops her, she and everyone she cares about will face a fate much stranger than death.

©2017 Michael Redhill (P)2017 Doubleday Canada

Critic reviews

"Bellevue Square is something of a performance.... In its taut span... Bellevue Square features several narrative and tonal hairpin turns. With each of these, our admiration for Redhill's storytelling dexterity burgeons.... I'd rather be lost in Redhill's ghost story than grounded in your average slab of tasteful literary realism." (The Globe and Mail)

"Sit yourself down in Bellevue Square and watch as parallel worlds collide. Redhill has written a mind-blowing brainteaser of a novel with plot twists worthy of David Lynch. A brilliant tribute to those among us whose brains are wired differently." (Neil Smith, author of Boo)

WOW- Michael Redhill had me hooked from the beginning.!

This was one of the most “twisty” mentally challenging novels I’ve read in a long time. I could not guess what was going to happen next- which made it even more exciting! I think it was genius and hope the sequel comes out soon. Read this book- you’re not going to be able to put it down.

Brilliant!

I love the writing style and detail in this book. Michael Redhill is a very detail-oriented author and I enjoyed imagining what his eloquent words were portraying. Definitely something I could read twice and I rarely say that. I really enjoyed this book especially because I hypothesized what was happening early on and could really appreciate where he went with it.

Sorry, not for me

If you are looking for a book that has lots of Toronto locations in it, then you may like this. If you want a book that has the laudable idea about treating mental illness like any other disease, then this is great. But frankly, it is so confusing with who is actually the real person and ends up not really clear (to me anyway), that I didn't enjoy it much. I bought it because if the outstanding beginning in the book store, but the story didn't hold up for me.

Total waste of time

I have not read a book this bad in many many years! I cannot imagine how this could win a Giller prize. The narrator is a woman but is really a man who does not know how woman behave or think. Characters are of the cardboard variety, introduced, not developed and then discarded. The plot line is bizarre and does not convince. I am sure that the author once worked in a bookshop, a hospital and has spent lots of time in public parks observing the fauna. There is even a-nod to the radio program “Writers and company”.