This last month saw another small war with Gaze making spending time in and near the bomb shelters to ensure safety. So, I decided to reread the Three Pines Series by Louise Penny, I have enjoyed them very much because it is not just about the murder but also the human side where I actually have learned about literature and culture; I did not really learn in high school about poetry but I enjoy it very much in this series.
I have read the whole series, since 2015 the new Louise Penny has been my birthday present to my self as they were published in the beginning of September, except the last one. In re-reading the series I thought to look at things not ‘murder- detection’ related but the other stuff.
STILL LIFE
published 2005, by St. Martin’s Paperbacks 318 pages (the first book of the series)
ISBN978-1-250-06873-6
Even the name of the book, ‘Still Life’ suggest a small peaceful, uneventful life where murder would be unlikely; about the murder victim, Jane Neal, the question was “who would kill kindness and why? (page 64).
The apartment Armand and Reine-Marie was a testament to a life well lived with family photos on the piano and shelves bulging with books (page 27); I can absolutely identify with that statement! The fact that Armand’s long career apparently had stalled in the cynical world of the Surete (page 2) does not mean he had a still life as the whole series tell.
Life is choice. All day. Every day. Who we talk to, where we sit, what we say, how we say it. And our lives become defined by our choices. It’s as simple and as complex as that. And as powerful (page 83). I believe that is correct to a certain degree so we have to consider who we allow to influence us before making a choice.
The great parade of life (page 113).
Life is loss. If we can accept that nothing is permanent, and change is inevitable, if we can adapt, then we are going to be happier people. Life is change. If you are not growing and evolving, you’re standing still and the rest of the world is surging ahead. If people are very immature. They lead “still” lives, waiting. Waiting for some-one to save them from the big bad world. The thing is no one else can save them because the problem is theirs and so is the solution (page 141-143).
Living our lives is like living in a long house. Until we make peace with the less agreeable parts of our past, they’d continue to heckle us from way down the long house (page 222). That sounds like a bit of Freud I believe.
The last sentence of the book also mentions Life: Life was far from harried here. But neither was it still.
A really funny remark: Peter knew it was there, that opiate of the Anglos. And his hand clutched the box just as the kettle whistled. Violent death demanded Earl Grey (page 47).
I really love the people of The Three Pines Village, and would love to join them for a meal in the Bistro, or browsing Myrna’s bookstore for a book to read!
FATAL GRACE
Published 2006 by Minotaur Books 311 pages (the second book in the series)
ISBN 978-0-312-54116-3
One year after the first book, it is before Christmas, everybody is celebrating Ruth’s new book: I am FINE is being published. The team: chief detective Armand Gamache, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, Isabelle Lacoste is called in to investigate a murder in Three Pines Village. The victim is CC de Poitiers, she had bought the evil Hadley House where murder and kidnapping had occurred in the first book.
Yolande in the first book and CC in this book I feel are the same person, unlikable, superficial, more interested in appearances than being honest and sensible: The monster is dead and the villagers are celebrating (page 85); Armand Gamache wondered whether CC de Poitiers was at that very moment trying to explain herself to a perplexed God and a couple of very angry seals (page 112).
Armand knew he was in the company of people who loved not only books, but words. Spoken, written, the power of words (page 274). However, there was also a murder by words (page 31).
Clara and Myrna shared their disdain for hard books; not the content, but the cover. Hardcovers were simply too hard to hold, especially in bed (page 13). I so agree with that statement!
The Three Pines village is described as an idyllic place, with peace and stillness and laughter. It had great joy and great sadness and the ability to accept both and be content. It has companionship and kindness. For Myrna it was like Brigadoon, only appearing every number of years and only to people who needed to see it (page 11). For Clara it was the enchanted village of her childhood. The village she had forgotten in attitude and importance of adulthood (page 11). A real contrast to our running to bomb shelters to be safe.
Ruth on life: In my teens my drug of choice was acceptance, in my twenties it was approval, in my thirties it was love, in my forties it was Scotch. That lasted a while. Now all I really crave is good bowl movement (page 45).
In the first two books two very different ways were used to kill; by bow and arrow and electrocution on a frozen lake.
It was almost impossible to electrocute someone these days, unless you were the governor of Texas (page 63). To have the death sentence is a sign of a backward, uncivilized society; the opposite of kind.
I really enjoy the literary quotes and poems! Poetry is not something I really learned to appreciate in high school, but here I see it can have a clarifying effect on the story.
THE CRUELEST MONTH
Published 2007 by Minotaur Books NY (book three of the series)
It is 4 months after the last book April, Easter.
In this book the victim is frightened to death during a séance by a witch. It is of course more complicated than that but that is the saying being repeated in the book.
The near enemy is a psychological concept. Two emotions that look the same but are actually opposites. One is healthy the other is sick: attachment masquerades as Love, Pity as Compassion and Indifference as Equanimity.
I think jealousy’s the cruellest emotion. It twists us into something grotesque. She was consumed by it. It ate away her happiness, her contentment. Her sanity. In the end she was blinded by bitterness and couldn’t see that she already had everything she wanted. Love and companionship (page 308).
- I wonder at the title of the book ‘The Cruelest Month’ but on page 308 it is written ‘the cruellest emotion’ with double l – I wonder why? It appears grammatically it should be with double l.
In this book Armand admits to Jean-Guy that he loves him like a son (page 235).
Jean-Guy: didn’t anyone die a normal death in Three Pines? And even their (Anglos) murders weren’t normal ,couldn’t they just haul off and stab each other, or use a gun or a bat? No. it was always something convoluted. Complicated. Very un-Quebecois. The Quebecois were straightforward, clear. If they liked you, they hugged. When they murdered you, they just whacked you over the head. Boom done. Convicted. Next (page 79).
In book two there is an intoxication with niacin and in this book with ephedra.
A RULE AGAINST MURDER (book 4 of the series).
Published 2008 by sphere
422 pages
ISBN 978-0-7515-7376-3
Armand and Reine-Marie celebrate their 35 years anniversary at Manoir Bellechase as always. At the hotel Peter’s family is celebrating the revealing of his father’s statue, the hotel needed a new roof and the price was a huge statute of Mr Charles Morrow. Peter’s mother has married again and is Mrs Finney. We get to know a very dysfunctional family, whom Mr Finney calls ‘the Morrows are mad because they have taken leave of their senses. They live in their heads and pay no heed to any other information flooding in (page 231)’.
An example of how messed up: the younger sister who is actually the more normal among the siblings, Mariana, is a single mother to a child called Bean and she has never revealed the gender of the child in a powerplay against the family; that the child cannot jump the older brother Thomas thinks that is his main problem. She is also a successful architect designing low-cost, good housing. Julia Martin is the older sister, they have not seen her for 25 years after a disagreement with her father, her father took her spirit and crushed her; but now her husband is in jail for fraud and they are divorced. At this family meeting their father’s huge and heavy statue really crushed her in an awful death.
Through out these books there are references to the conflict between the French and Anglo community.
This book is outside Three Pines Village, but Peter and Clara are here, and she is a great artist. Peter has a still life as explained in the first book and cannot protect his wife from his family.
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