Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Louise Penny

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime

402 pages, published May 22, 2012

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Still Life is the first book to feature Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec.  He is called in investigate the suspicious death of Jane Neal in the rural village of Three Pines south of Montreal.   Neal’s body is found in the woods, shot in the heart with an old fashioned arrow.  Shortly before her death, Neal’s painting Fair Day which depicts many of the local community members was accepted into a local art show.  A coincidence?  Inspector Gamache must discover the truth.

Quotes 

“Life is choice. All day, everyday. 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.  So when I’m observing that’s what I’m watching for.  The choices people make.”

 

“There are four things that lead to wisdom. You ready for them?’

She nodded, wondering when the police work would begin.

“They are four sentences we learn to say, and mean.” Gamache held up his hand as a fist and raised a finger with each point. “I don’t know. I need help. I’m sorry. I was wrong’.”

 

“Myrna could spend happy hours browsing bookcases. She felt if she could just get a good look at a person’s bookcase and their grocery cart, she’d pretty much know who they were.”

 

“Life is change. If you aren’t growing and evolving, you’re standing still, and the rest of the world is surging ahead.  Most of these people are very immature. They lead “still” lives, waiting.”

 

“I think many people love their problems. Gives them all sorts of excuses for not growing up and getting on with life.”

 

“They waited for life to happen to them. They waited for someone to save them. Or heal them. They did nothing for themselves.”

 

“The fault lies with us, and only us. It’s not fate, not genetics, not bad luck, and it’s definitely not Mom and Dad. Ultimately it’s us and our choices. But, but’ – now her eyes shone and she almost vibrated with excitement – ‘the most powerful, spectacular thing is that the solution rests with us as well. We’re the only ones who can change our lives, turn them around. So all those years waiting for someone else to do it are wasted.”

 

“I’ve been treating you with courtesy and respect because that’s the way I choose to treat everyone. But never, ever mistake kindness with weakness.”

 

“Aid workers, when handing out food to starving people, quickly learn that the people fighting for it at the front are the people who need it least. It’s the people sitting quietly at the back, too weak to fight, who need it the most. And so too with tragedy.”

 

“Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table,”

 

“Normally death came at night, taking a person in their sleep, stopping their heart or tickling them awake, leading them to the bathroom with a splitting headache before pouncing and flooding their brain with blood. It waits in alleys and metro stops. After the sun goes down plugs are pulled by white-clad guardians and death is invited into an antiseptic room.  But in the country death comes, uninvited, during the day. It takes fishermen in their longboats. It grabs children by the ankles as they swim. In winter it calls them down a slope too steep for their budding skills, and crosses their skies at the tips. It waits along the shore where snow met ice not long ago but now, unseen by sparkling eyes, a little water touches the shore, and the skater makes a circle slightly larger than intended. Death stands in the woods with a bow and arrow at dawn and dusk. And it tugs cars off the road in broad daylight, the tires spinning furiously on ice or snow, or bright autumn leaves. ”

 

“Life is loss.  But out of that, as the book stresses, comes freedom. If we can accept that nothing is permanent, and change is inevitable, if we can adapt, then we’re going to be happier people.”

 

“Everyday for Lucy’s entire dog life Jane had sliced a banana for breakfast and had miraculously dropped one of the perfect disks on to the floor where it sat for an instant before being gobbled up. Every morning Lucy’s prayers were answered, confirming her belief that God was old and clumsy and smelt like roses and lived in the kitchen.  But no more.  Lucy knew her God was dead. And she now knew the miracle wasn’t the banana, it was the hand that offered the banana.”

 

“Almost invariably people expected that if you were a good person you shouldn’t meet a bad end, that only the deserving are killed and certainly only the deserving are murdered.  However well hidden and subtle, there was a sense that a murdered person had somehow asked for it. That’s why the shock when someone they knew to be kind and good was a victim. There was a feeling that surely there had been a mistake.” 

My Take

While Still Life has received critical acclaim in the mystery fiction world (named One of the Five Mystery/Crime Novels of the Decade by Deadly Pleasures Magazine, Winner of the New Blood Dagger, Arthur Ellis, Barry, Anthony, and Dilys awards), I had a hard time really engaging with it.  I never warmed up to Chief Inspector Armand Gamache or the supporting characters.  Penny does have many insightful things to say about the human condition.  However, I was happy to finish the book so I could move onto something new.