'I was a little more emotional than I was expecting to be - but life doesn't prepare you for receiving a $100,000 cheque and then addressing people live across the nation, so I think I will probably have no memory of this evening in about 20 minutes, just to protect myself,' he said with a laugh in an interview after the awards ceremony. Redhill seemed shocked as he accepted the prize and gave a tearful speech thanking his supporters as well as the late businessman Rabinovitch. Redhill was named winner of the $100,000 honour at a televised Toronto gala Monday night, the first Giller Prize awarded since the death of founder Jack Rabinovitch in August.īellevue Square tells the story of a woman who tries to track down her doppelganger following rumours that someone who looks like her hangs out at Bellevue Square, a park in Toronto's Kensington Market. Unless Jean stops her, she and everyone she cares about will face a fate much stranger than death.Michael Redhill has won the Giller Prize, Canada's richest literary award, for his novel Bellevue Square. 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.īut when some of them start disappearing, she fears her alleged double has a sinister agenda. 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. 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. She begins at the crossroads of Kensington Market: a city park called Bellevue Square. But after two customers insist they've seen her double, Jean decides to investigate.

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. 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.

She's never seen her, but others swear they have.

Bellevue Square by Michael Redhill