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Overview
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.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780385684859 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Doubleday Canada |
| Publication date: | 09/18/2018 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Sales rank: | 730,373 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
My doppelganger problems began one afternoon in early April.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Bellevue Square"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Michael Redhill.
Excerpted by permission of Doubleday Canada.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Reading Group Guide
1. The author has said that Bellevue Square is a “fantasia on consciousness.” What do you think he might mean by that?
2. Jean is an unreliable narrator. In part, this is because she is unaware of key things concerning the nature of her existence. How does she compare to other unreliable narrators you may have encountered in your reading, like Holden Caufield in The Catcher in the Rye, Gone Girl’s Nick and Amy, or Humbert Humbert in Lolita?
3. The doppelganger theme has been employed by writers for various purposes. Edgar Allen Poe’s William Wilson—in the short story of the same name—suffers from seeing his double and tries to kill him, only to find himself bleeding to death. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Double” is the story of a man’s more-interesting alter ego, and Josephine Tey’s Brat Farrar is about an imposter. Why do you think Redhill chose a doppelganger theme to explore in Bellevue Square?
4. Michael Redhill also writes under the name Inger Ash Wolfe, a character who appears in this book. Why do you think Redhill made his alter ego a character in this book?
5. Bellevue Square is also concerned with authorship, storytelling, and point of view. How are these ideas expressed in the book, and how do they deepen your understanding of the novel?
6. Readers and reviewers have commented that Bellevue Square is a layered novel with clues to its meaning scattered throughout. For instance, on the very first page, Jean—who is about to develop serious ontological problems—spies on a customer in her bookstore “from my perspective in Fiction.” Redhill has said that he likes books that teach their readers how to read them. What clues did you find on your read? What do you think you might find if you read it again?