Bilodo lives a solitary daily life, routinely completing his postal rounds every day and returning to his empty Montreal apartment. But he has found a way to break the cycle—Bilodo has taken to stealing people’s mail, steaming open the envelopes, and reading the letters inside. And so it is he comes across Ségolène’s letters. She is corresponding with Gaston, a master poet, and their letters are each composed of only three lines. They are writing each other haikus. The simplicity and elegance of their poems move Bilado and he begins to fall in love with her. But one day, out on his round, he witnesses a terrible and tragic accident. Just as Gaston is walking up to the post-box to mail his next haiku to Ségolène, he is hit by a car and dies on the side of the road. And so Bilodo makes an extraordinary decision—he will impersonate Gaston and continue to write to Ségolène under this guise. But how long can the deception continue for?

The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman is a beautiful, charming, poignant love story that has captured my heart, stolen it and ran off with it! The lovely story is a story full of hope and optimism, a novel that will dearly touch everybody that has the pleasure to read it.

Romance novels are not my usual go to read, whenever I do happen to read them they are all novels that are classical… for example romance novels written by Austen, Bronte, and Hardy; All some of my favorite authors! My point is that I find modern age romance novels to be cliche, predictable and if I am going to be ruthless, irritating. That is why it is so peculiar that I loved this novel as it is part of the romance genre, however, do not let this fool you as this novel is not your typical romance read… far from it actually. This is because this novel features a twist about somebody impersonating somebody else in letters to a loved one and thus a relationship is formed. When I knew that the relationship in this novel was acquired this way I knew instantly that this story had to be read and read it and love it I did!

The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman is a story about the novel’s protagonist Bilodo. Bilodo is a twenty-seven-year-old postman who is an introvert who likes to keep to himself and to live a simple life. Bilodo is a creature of habit and his everyday routine is simple and repetitive; the reader follows Bilodo on his daily routine early on in the novel, we follow him as he travels to work early in the morning, we follow him as he looks through the mail and takes the mail allotted to him and then, of course, we follow him as he delivers the mail to the addresses. However Bilodo is mischievous, he may seem the ordinary man but he has two personalities and one of them is completely different to his day personality as in the evening he becomes a different man. The reader soon follows Bilodo as he has his dinner and during this, he takes out letters that he has stolen and was supposed to have delivered that very day. He steams them open and illegally reads them, which gives him explicit detail into the lives of strangers. After Bilodo has finished reading such letters he will make copies of them and then deliver them the next day to the rightful addresses.

When Bilodo first starts this devious action of his, it is a bit of harmless fun that helps in curing his curiosity. I have to admit, I am a nosy woman and I personally would love to be able to read letters addressed to people I know and strangers…would I ever actually do this? Of course not! I am a curious woman by nature and the thought is interesting but I would never actually commit this act. My point is that I believe that a lot of people in the world would love to do just what Bilodo is doing and I am sure that this may happen but the majority of us are law-abiding citizens so we would never actually do this that is why reading about it is so fun!

Bilodo’s fun soon turns into so much more than this as he falls in love with a woman from letters he has steamed open and read. The novel at this point takes a dark and almost sinister turn when the male correspondent is killed and instead of leaving this matter behind him and moving on with his life, he continues the correspondence and starts to impersonate the woman’s partner. As I am sure you can already tell this novel is not as straightforward as one might first think! That is what makes this novel so enchanting and exciting and I implore all of you lovely readers to read it!

The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman is a quirky, moving story. The premise of this novel is stellar and I fell in love with the story long before I even began to read it. There are times in your life as a reader when you come across one particular book that touches your soul and feels you with delight and this is how I feel about this wonderful book. Letter writing and novels that feature letters and or diaries are my favorite kind to read; I adore the lost art of letter writing and as the world today we barely put pen to paper and that is one of the many reasons that make this novel so poignant and powerful. Below I am going to include a lovely quote about letter writing from the novel, it is beautiful and enchanting and explains letter writing wonderfully.

“More alluring by far were letters from others. Real letters, written by real people who preferred the sensual act of writing by hand, the delightfully languorous anticipation of the reply, to the reptilian coldness of the keyboard and instantaneity of the Internet – people for whom the act of writing was a deliberate choice and in some cases, one sensed, a matter of principle, a stand taken in favour of a lifestyle not quite so determined by the race against time and the obligation to perform.”

This quote is one of my favorite quotes of all time, it is simple and beautifully lovely. As I am sure many of you lovely readers know, I am English whereas my husband is American and in the beginning of our relationship, we would write letters to each other, getting to know each other and letting each other know how much we love each other. It was a beautiful thing we had done and still to this day on birthdays and holidays we write each other a letter instead of getting each other a card. My point is that letter writing is marvelous and I truly wish more people wrote them and I hope this novel and my review inspire some of you lovely people to do so!

Bilodo is a character that has done a very bad thing and although he has committed this act, as a reader and a lover of love I cannot help but admire him and his poetic beauty. Bilodo is a wonderful character that you will fall in love with; At the beginning of this novel you would never think this and you would never think that you could end up rooting for him but this is what will happen and this certainly happened in my case. He may have committed a horrible act by impersonating a dead lover but he genuinely loves the woman in question and that is good enough for me.

As well as this novel being poignant and beautiful it also asks the reader many moral questions. What would you do if you found out that your ‘competition’ had passed and you were able to talk to the love of your life without her ever second guessing because she has never seen the original mans face? Would it be cruel? Would it be ok because you are sparing her sadness? These are just some of the many questions this novel asks you. Do let me know your thoughts below and what your answer could be to those above questions. I think this novel is interesting and will definitely inspire questions and debates in its readers so please let me know all of those wonderful thoughts of yours below!

The novel’s author Denis Theriault is an exceptional writer that fills the novel with beautiful prose and thought-provoking literature. The book has the power to make the reader read in wide-eyed wonder because of how visually stunning the words were and also how compelling the narration was. There were many points throughout this novel that I had to pause and re-read the last sentence or passage; I had to do this because the words were enriched with beauty… I had to linger around those words to experience the full wonder of them. This novel was an enjoyable reading experience and a very lovely one, I loved reading about two beautiful souls falling in love with each other via Haiku poetry as well as the enchanting words they exchange in their letters. This novel may be short but it is dense and full of wonderful literature as well as many twists and turns so please, read this wonderful novel and fall in love!

To summarise my thoughts on this stellar novel; The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman is a beautiful, poignant, quirky love story and unlike any novels published today. The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman gets Five Stars from me!

Thank you for reading lovely book lovers! I really hope you love the sound of this novel and if you do please do comment below and let me know your thoughts! Please let me know below what you think of Bilodo and his predicament and what you would do. I love talking with fellow book lovers so let me know your thoughts below! Thank you so much again for reading!

Goodbye for now book lovers,

Amazon U.K. / Goodreads / Book Depository / Publisher; One World

Thank you so much again for reading!