The richly described life of the square becomes the centre of the novel and of Jean’s attention. She stakes out a bench at its heart, Bellevue Square, and begins to observe the comings and goings of the folk living and trading nearby. Intrigued that she may have a doppelganger, Jean begins leaving the bookshop in the hands of her trusty assistant and browsing the market stalls in the hope of glimpsing the elusive Ingrid. Full of strange tales of Central American spirits, Katerina works in a Guatemalan café in Kensington Market and explains that Jean she could be the twin of a woman who shops there named Ingrid Fox. It’s real.Ī few days after this bizarre encounter, a stranger named Katerina visits the shop and again mistakes her for another person. To prove her she’s wearing a wig, he makes a grab for her long hair. When one of her regulars insists he’s just seen her in Kensington Market with a short hair style, she assures him he’s mistaken. But indulging her quirky clients can go only so far. Her knowledge of her carefully chosen stock means she can cater to customers’ whims, at least in the literary realm.
January to June she alphabetises the biographies by author, July to December, by subject. Narrator Jean Mason runs a downtown bookshop that she occasionally rearranges totally to suit herself.
Written by Michael Redhill - As you eagerly turn the pages of this fascinating brainteaser of a novel by Michael Redhill you may find yourself suspecting that the first person narrator is not just allowing herself to slip into delusion and mental illness… she’s already there! A compelling contemporary psychological thriller set in Toronto, Bellevue Square won the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Canada’s most prestigious literary award and has just come out in the UK.
0 kommentar(er)
