Roch Carrier's trilogy, of which Is It the Sun, Philibert? is the last part and the newest Dark Age, drives on remorselessly from rural Quebec to the civilization of Montreal, where the real heart of darkness lies. The more leisurely tempo of the earlier novels, with their attenuated nights, slow drives, and long meditations between speech, is now abandoned for the newest rhythm. Those repeated images in La Guerre, Yes Sir! and Floralie are now the mental furniture of young Philibert; they haunt his speech and make him turn his most individual acts into threatening allegories.

With a ferocious irony Carrier thrusts the new world on us as he does on Philibert. The novel has not so much a plot as a conspiracy: if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. Freedom is death, but only so recognized at the moment of embrace. "A man alone," Philibert...