Sunday, January 07, 2018

Bellevue Square

Michael Redhill's novel won the Giller prize so my expectations were high.The premise was intriguing: a woman discovers that she has a doppelganger and sets out to find her. Jean Mason, a married mother of two, begins hanging out in Bellevue Square, near the bookstore she owns, hoping to catch sight of her double. The square is a magnet for Toronto's mentally ill, drug addicted and homeless and Jean gets to know them all. It is revealed that she has a history of mental illness and we wonder if her doppelganger is a figment of her imagination. The story kept veering off in unexpected directions and I was drawn in, waiting for answers that never came. I finished the book wondering what I'd just read and why this novel won the Giller Prize.

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