A review by ruth24
Bellevue Square by Michael Redhill

3.0

Whut.

So I finished [b:Bellevue Square|33595663|Bellevue Square|Michael Redhill|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1494700995s/33595663.jpg|54410622] on Friday and I'm still not entirely sure what happened. I went into it completely blind, knowing only that it had won the Giller Prize last year, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it’s a mystery set in Toronto. The main character, Jean, is married with kids and owns a bookstore. When people start telling her they’ve seen her doppelganger in Kensington Market, she's just curious at first, but when sh*t starts to go down, she sets out to find her.

I was hooked on the mystery right away, wanting to know how it was all connected. Even after the ‘reveal,’ things were up in the air, and at the end I still wasn’t sure what the ‘truth’ was. Based on the other Goodreads reviews I’ve read, quite a few people were generally confused by the book, some even annoyed. While I definitely didn’t understand [b:Bellevue Square|33595663|Bellevue Square|Michael Redhill|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1494700995s/33595663.jpg|54410622] completely, I enjoyed it. One of the best parts of the book was how the park at Bellevue Square came alive with its own ‘personality’ and motley crew of characters.

Spoiler

I also liked the psychological, “Fight Club”-esque aspect of the story – that you didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t and how some things were never explained (like what Jean was doing all the time she thought she was at Bookshop). I felt like I was able to be more in tune with Jean’s perspective and attached to the ‘alternate reality' she thought was real. Or was it real?!

IMO, [b:Bellevue Square|33595663|Bellevue Square|Michael Redhill|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1494700995s/33595663.jpg|54410622] was confusing because it’s not your typical general fiction mystery/thriller – it’s literary fiction, so there’s more meandering and mundane life in between the BOOM BOOM SCARE SCARE and it’s also more open to interpretation. To be honest, literary fiction puts me off sometimes for this very reason, but I found [b:Bellevue Square|33595663|Bellevue Square|Michael Redhill|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1494700995s/33595663.jpg|54410622] to be accessible, for the most part, and an entertaining read.