Le postier Passila par Alain Beaulieu (review)

forcément à l’aise avec les zones d’ombre de leurs pairs, et qui de surcroît sont en cavale, à tel point qu’ils se fuient eux-mêmes. Même si vers la fin du livre, on sent que tous les personnages essentiels vont enfin se retrouver sous un même toit, on sait aussi que la partie n’est pas gagnée d’avance. Pamela, amie inséparable d’Ester, résume en ces simples mots le malaise qui (dés)unit Gabriel et Arnaud: “Ces deux-là se cherchent depuis toujours. C’est une histoire d’amour contrariée” (175). Ester, qui n’aura voulu faire que son devoir de mère protectrice, en arrive pourtant à ce terrible aveux: “Je voudrais n’avoir jamais eu d’enfant” (180). La dernière confrontation au sommet de la pyramide Gabriel-Ester-Arnaud aurait pu se vouloir cathartique; en fait, elle frise l’horreur. Le lecteur, avec raison, n’y croit plus. L’espace d’un bref moment, la famille dynamitée, en grande partie à cause des frasques du fils, est recomposée, mais au prix fort. Gabriel et Ester encaissent la mort d’Arnaud comme ils ont toujours vécu: dos à dos. Presque comme une arrièrepens ée, il y a dans le roman un post-scriptum discret mais essentiel, en ceci que, dans la mort, Arnaud permet à son père de rouvrir la source tarie et de reprendre la plume, parce qu’il a maintenant quelque chose à raconter. Il est clair que finalement c’est le processus même de l’écriture, de la création artistique qui aura eu la part belle dans ce roman. On ne s’en plaindra pas. Western Kentucky University Karin Egloff BEAULIEU, ALAIN. Le postier Passila. Arles: Actes Sud, 2010. ISBN 978-2-7427-9118-7. Pp. 186. 18 a. Author of ten novels, four of which are for young adults, Alain Beaulieu’s most recent work moves out of Quebec where the majority of his stories take place. Le postier Passila is situated in an imaginary town somewhere in Latin America where the volcano Tipec is always threatening to explode. This becomes a metaphor for the town itself and the tense social relations that the postman Passila senses almost immediately upon arrival. Tired of the corruption of the big city and of a romantic relationship gone bad, Passila has taken this new post in provincial Ludovia thinking small town equals simpler, more satisfying living. Nothing could be further from the truth. Passila is immediately suspect by all as the outsider, and each character he encounters seems to suggest he needs to take sides in a mysterious and dangerous game whose rules he never fully comprehends . Ludovia is a twisted version of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. Besides the postman Passila, there is the nasty Miranda who rents rooms, the terrifying policeman Cortez, the ineffectual mayor Martinez, the earnest doctor Noriega, the angry baker and his wife, Raul the meddling taxi driver and the beautiful waitress Estrella Hernandez whose now wheel-chair-ridden father Pablo used to have Cortez’s job, before Cortez was imposed upon Ludovia from the big city. Passila encounters each of these colorful inhabitants every day either in the crumbling post office he has been assigned to or when making his rounds. He learns rather quickly that mail delivery in a small Latin American town is just as corrupt as it is in the big city and that if he is to get along, he will have to play the heavy himself at times, refusing mail delivery unless he is offered in exchange a drink at the little diner where Estrella waits tables or a warm roll fresh out the angry baker’s oven. Further, the policeman Cortez informs Passila that he needs to pass along 776 FRENCH REVIEW 85.4 to him any suspect parcels. Passila is adamantly opposed to such unethical behavior at first, but then finds himself steaming open certain letters in hopes of finding clues to a mystery he cannot name. Le postier Passila is a hard-boiled detective fiction (with a postman in the place of the detective) that is unapologetically noir. As such...