“The Brutal Telling” - Louise Penny

 (Chief Inspector Gamache book 5)

🕸 This novel was spellbinding! Notions of the end of the world, chaos, and destruction swirl around as the Furies come at last, to idyllic Three Pines. Olivier is the Three Pines resident who is swallowed up by the mystery this time. What will we learn about him? Will we still love him afterwards? I love how Olivier was secondary character in prior novels so we feel we know him, but here, Penny unveils facets to his story that make us uncertain.

🕸 Penny has referenced Canada’s shame (the treatment of the indigenous peoples) previously. Recall, it formed a major plot point with the Arnot case. Here, Gamache takes a pilgrimage to the Vancouver area. I say “pilgrimage” because it didn’t seem to add much new information to the investigation, but it felt like Gamache and Penny were honoring the Native peoples and their customs, and looking hard at the damage caused by the government in collusion with the logging industry. Gamache is reverential toward the totems. While it didn’t advance the plot, Penny seemed to send Gamache on a mission to bear witness to the past and the resurgence of the Native peoples and their customs and culture.

There’s an interesting piece in a recent National Geographic on this subject: https://apple.news/AFydWeusvTfmdHcEFkB6V5A 

🕸 Peter is truly the worst. You really feel deep sympathy for Clara, though she doesn’t seem to mind his petty nature. I mean, he doesn’t come off great in the last book, and his ongoing jealousy of Clara’s talent is extremely off-putting, but he is awful in this novel. 

🕸 In addition to being a skillful mystery writer, I love Penny’s inclusion of history in her plots, her knowledgeable references to art history, and her food writing is mouthwatering!

🕸 Penny calls one of the characters an “emotional communist” for counting everyone equally, but none too much. I thought this phrase was particularly apt.

🕸 A bit of literary serendipity: Penny refers to the “little lost Romanov girls” and I recently finished Bryn Turnbull’s “The Last Grand Duchess”.