The Postman’s Fiancée by Denis Thériault is a story about infatuation, love, haiku, and identity.

Tania moves from Bavaria to Montreal to fine-tune her French and fall in love. Waitressing at a restaurant frequented by ‘regulars’, she meets Bilodo, a shy postman who writes haiku and who is passionate about calligraphy.

He came through the door every day at noon, impeccable in his postman’s uniform. He was tall, rather thin and not exactly handsome, but his gentle eyes and timid smile made Tania go weak inside.

It’s love-at-first-sight for Tania but Bilodo, although polite, fails to respond to Tania’s advances –

Having done some research on calligraphy, she’d draw up his bill in Unical, a script he seemed to favour, and sign it with a ‘Tania’ embellished with discreet flourishes.

Tania’s approach to love is delightfully dramatic. Her lack of fear is admirable and also results in some of the more humorous moments in the story –

She regretted not having died the first time she’d read that poem, at the moment of her most perfect happiness…

One stormy day, their lives take a surprising turn, and become entwined in a way that neither could have predicted.

…Tania was overcome by a peculiar combination of bliss and anguish. It seemed to her that she could never be happier, and never more uneasy. So was that what it was like, true love?

There’s a quaint, fairytale quality to the narrative and changes to the fortunes of the characters happen in flashes, creating drama without overdoing the tension.

The old-fashioned epistolary relationship between two characters (they exchange haiku and tanka) occasionally bumps against modern communication technologies, stretching the plausibility of the story, but go with it.

3/5 A modern fairy-tale (with operatic overtones).

I received my copy of The Postman’s Fiancée from the publisher, Oneworld Publications, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

What’s it about?

Tania has moved to Montreal to fine-tune her French, to study, and to fall in love. She meets Bilodo, a shy postman who spends his days writing haiku, and they become friends. Yet fate intervenes, and Tania and Bilodo’s lives become intertwined in a way she would never have expected.

This is a standalone work, but revisits the characters in Thériault’s other novel, The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman.

My thoughts

I’m going to start this by saying that I loved The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman. It is elegant and clean, and blends the Japanese poetry so wonderfully into the text that it’s like reading a long-form poem. So I came to The Postman’s Fiancée with high expectations.

It is a different book, but it’s not a disappointment. Where the previous book was really driven by haiku, this is much more based around the story of Tania and Bilodo. There is still poetry, though, and it is as elegant as the first one. In fact, I found it more touching. Thériault manages to convey the sense of loneliness surrounding Tania to such an extent that while her behaviour leaves quite a lot to be desired, the reader can understand her actions. Bilodo remains the same slightly aloof character we met in the first book, but somehow has more depth of character in this one. This is Tania’s story, but Bilodo is so intertwined with her that it’s his too.

I won’t say too much more, for fear of spoilers, but this is, simply put, a beautiful book. Thériault has a gift for words, and his haiku are worthy of their own volume.

Would I recommend it?

Yes. Without a doubt. This is technically its own book, but I heartily recommend you read The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman too.

In the Postman's Fiancée we meet Tania, a young Bavarian woman who moves to Montréal to improve her French. She falls in love with a customer at the café she works in, Bilodo a quiet and shy postman, even though they never speak beyond orders for drinks and food. When Bilodo has a serious accident and loses his memory Tania poses as his fiancée in an effort to make his love for her a reality. If you think of a cross between Amélie and While You Were Sleeping in book form (with additional haiku) you'd not be far off. The plot is rather like a French farce, as Tania tries to keep the amnesiac Bilodo from any contact with his past but it also has a strong thread of sadness (or maybe I should say ennui, it sounds more appropriate with a french twist) running through it. As well as the french feel to the book it has a rather spare elegance, like the haiku used throughout. I read this as a standalone novel but there is an earlier book, featuring some of the same characters, whose plot intertwines with it which I have now added to my 'to-read' list.