Denis Thériault

I quickly eb=ntered into the life of Bilobo, the postman. The peculiar postman, one might say. His is a strange and solitary life. He enjoys callography, he enjoys steaming open handwritten letters - they are the personal ones - and reading them, though he always then sends them on. It's when one of the recipients of the letters dies, and he goes on to assume the deceased's persona that things take off for Bilobo. He goes to great trouble to 'become' the recipient, and learns to write haikus, because that is what these correspondents exchange.....

I became tremendously absorbed in the plot of this novella, to have sympathy with Bilobo, to enjoy his developing dextrousness with the haiku form. And then the plot started to become cyclical...

A satisfying and original read

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As I started to read the book, it seems to be a simple life story of a postman who loves his job and life. Bilodo is a 27 year old postman whose life is filled with his job and his love for calligraphy. However he has a peculiar habit of secretly taking letters home and opening them to read and make copies before resealing them to be delivered the next day.

In the process, he falls in love with one of the correspondents whose letters he has intercepted. She writes only haiku to a man, Grandpre, on Bilodo’s route. As Bilodo love for this woman grew, so does his obsession for her. He goes out of his way to learn everything about her, including her love for haiku. Absorbing himself in form and essence of haiku. One day an accident causes Bilodo’s world come crashing down and the story turns bizarre, dark and ghostly.

I find the story simple yet passionate, as the story between two people who has never met grows with intensity. Using the cadences of haiku as a metaphor for the rhythms of making love builds on this intensity.… (more)