September 15, 2021
The reclusive driver of a bookmobile encounters a life-changing stranger during his travels. The protagonist of this novel--a man so fully devoted to his traveling library that he's simply known to all as "the Driver"--leads a quiet and particular life: He occupies a small Quebec City apartment alone; socializes primarily with a lone author friend; and is characterized by a handful of "idiosyncratic ideas" honed privately over the course of his lifetime ("if two people were really made to get along together, they should like not only the same books and the same songs, but also the same passages in his books and songs"). For almost his entire adulthood, his routine has varied little. He makes seasonal rounds in his mobile library (a converted milk truck) to bring everything from Hemingway to publisher-rejected manuscripts to the far-flung readers of Canada's North Shore and surrounding areas. Now aging, he anticipates his final book "tour," but his routine is thrown into disarray upon meeting Marie, the enigmatic and captivating manager of sorts for a traveling brass band. The Driver is instantly engaged by her "tenderness and strength," and, as he befriends and travels alongside the band (they in a refurbished school bus), he and Marie forge a close and intangible bond. As the Driver, full of melancholy, soaks in the details of his penultimate tour--the austere, lonely landscapes; the strange fellow readers, from fishermen's wives to hydroplane pilots--he and Marie grow closer, exposing the vulnerability of two introverted souls struggling to close a chasm between them. Quaint and understated, Poulin's novel offers a deeply felt meditation on loneliness, age, and the improbability of human connection. Set against a lovingly rendered landscape, the ups and downs of Marie and the Driver's relationship are often affecting, though the novel lacks the panache to become something truly original. Those seeking a tender (albeit sometimes milquetoast) account of two intersecting lives, however, will end this book satisfied and even moved. Finely detailed if sometimes slow.
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October 11, 2021
Canadian novelist Poulin (Mister Blue) continues his oeuvre of quiet, unimposing fiction with this delicate tale of a Quebec City bookmobile owner whose solitary life is upended after he meets an alluring woman. Known only as “the Driver,” the eccentric protagonist surrounds himself with books and rejected manuscripts donated by their authors, and grimly anticipates the encroaching decline of his later years, which he intends to circumvent through suicide. While investigating the sounds of a marching band in his neighborhood, he meets Marie, the lovely organizer of a troupe of traveling artists. Like him, she’s gray-haired and reserved, and she’s beautiful, but she’s involved with fellow troupe member Slim. Regardless, Marie and the Driver’s relationship deepens, affording Poulin plenty of opportunities to depict Quebec landmarks in lush detail as the couple rides together along the bookmobile routes, during which a booksmith named Jack pops in to share his literary observations. Narrated in ponderous, poetic prose, the brief text successfully harnesses a range of themes, made potent by the melancholy mix of the Driver’s fear of aging and the lure of romance. Poulin once again shows his knack for grace and nuance.