The Straw Man

Ian C. Nelson is the former Assistant Director of Libraries (Collection
Management & Budget) at the University of Saskatchewan and Dramaturge
for the Festival de la Dramaturgie des Prairies.

Daniel Poliquin’s L’homme de Paille was winner of the 1999 Trillium
Book Award. It is a delight now to read this clever and idiomatic
translation by Wayne Grady. The novel seamlessly blends fiction and
history, historic myth and legend, real and fanciful genealogy, and a
wealth of period lore about the Canadian colonies from 1759 until just
after the French Revolution. As one of the various narrators of this
fascinating story says, “[F]antasy is truer than history.” The
eponymous straw man is a sometime Rip Van Winkle who, after being
wounded in a colonial skirmish, suffers from long bouts of sleeping or
catatonia. His ancestry is doubtful but literally woven into the fabric
of New France. Assisted by a dedicated troupe of players, he establishes
a seigneury near Quebec City.

The Straw Man is a story with many threads of personal and political
loyalties going “back and forth like a weather vane in a hurricane.”
Poliquin’s genius lies in letting each voice in turn recount each step
of the tale from the owner’s particular perspective and the, in a
wonderful trompe l’oeil ending, gathering all the threads of
relationship back together to bring us back to his original company of
players. This novel adds to Daniel Poliquin’s distinguished reputation
as a novelist, storyteller, and translator.