Even with two of his six novels still to be translated into English, Jacques Poulin is the francophone Quebec writer with the greatest potential appeal to English-speaking audiences outside Quebec, not just in anglophone Canada but in the United States as well. The fluently bilingual novelist writes from a North American perspective and with a cosmopolitan awareness of pockets of French culture throughout the continent. Rather than restricting himself to caractères québécois, Poulin explores with a kind of aboriginal insight the four solitudes of French-English and Canada-United States. Although his favorite themes may appear to be typically québécois--politics and history, the beauty of Quebec City and the St. Lawrence River, and the Quebecker's mysterious attraction for the United States--his stylistic approach to these themes, based as it is on an engaging sense of humor and on a...