Review: 3 stars
My friend Patrick and I have a lovely Christmas tradition. We gift each other our most anticipated read, or our favourite read from the past year. Over the years, he’s sent me some great choices, and this year, he opted for ‘Bellevue Square’ by Michael Redhill.
Redhill has written a cerebral thriller in which the credibility of our narrator, Jean Mason, is questioned throughout the novel. Jean lives a fairly ordinary life in Toronto, until she discovers from chance acquaintances that she has a doppelgänger that frequents Bellevue Square, and that myth has it only one of the doppelgängers can exist in the physical world. This news ignites Jean’s all-consuming hunt for her look-a-like, Ingrid. Jean works with a band of haphazard characters that frequent the square to unravel this mystery. We soon learn that Jean suffers from mental illness, and that is when we begin to question the veracity of her commentary and whether we, the readers, are being duped ourselves. The novel pulses towards an inexorable face-off between the Jean and Ingrid, in which only one can survive.
The premise of the novel is original, but at times gimmicky, and Redhill takes many pains to elevate the suspense of the novel. He guides the reader unwittingly to invest deeply in Jean’s character, which I think is a wholly successful rendering. We empathize with her struggle to appear ‘normal’ to her sons and husband, and are impressed by the ease with which she slips into the patchwork fabric of Toronto’s underbelly. This outpour of support for Jean is what makes the twist in the end quite dramatic. The finale unravels our notion of who, or what, Jean really is and prompts us to shift our sympathies to Ingrid.
While the ending is intriguing and refreshing to me, I found that there were a few doldrums in the novel, when pace fell off and my interest waned. I would’ve appreciated more time allotted to the hasty ending to explore the questions of reality and existence that Redhill launches with pages left to go. Overall, this was a good read with a well-developed protagonist, but fell short for me on a few other dimensions.