Louise Penny

I choose to blog when I have an appreciation moment. What I like about Still Life is the interplay of art and world. Some observations seemed to try to hard, and this is her first book, so it's not going to be her polished style years later, but there is sometimes better work in the earlier years, when people took more pains to make it.

I'm fairly ambivalent about mystery, and crime fiction, procedurals. I know there is a long glorious tradition. My mother, stepmother and stepfather like the genre. I'm a fan of deduction but I don't think they give enough clues, and they have decoy clues, so that it's all ishkabibble. And in modern times, there's an unfolding of the story, which can be glorious. 

I don't like the focus on figuring out a killer's psychology, I've never been interested in forensic psychology, I'm more interested in liberation psychology. I suppose it's good to know the dark side, not deny the dark side, get in touch with the shadow and all that Jungian stuff.

Then there's the element of culture. To go so granular into a place, you can learn about culture. An appreciation for the complexity of culture is important.

I love books that make me look up a lot of words. I didn't so much like that when I was younger, but now I know so many words, an author that doesn't challenge me isn't as interesting.

There's a lot of Quebec culture and French vocabulary that is fun to look up. I was going to write learn but I don't feel like I'm in charge of what sticks and I'm past the age of memorizing things.

My stepmother mentioned Louise Penny, and I respect her, so I thought I'd give her book a try. Still Life is set in small town Quebec, outside of Montreal, closer to the USA border. I won't summarize it.

Not sure yet if I'll read another soon, but I am enjoying this one, so I probably will circle back to her next book, A Fatal Grace. There are 19 so far, she seems to crank one out a year. 

Her last one was co-written with Hillary Clinton, whom I'm minimally a fan of, not some cult fuckwit who worships an imperfect politician. I read her What Happened. Made me really hate Putin's interference in the election. The USA has drifted into Russia loving (Rand Paul, Tucker McTraitor, and all the other autocrat loving, anti-democracy, foreign agents, insurrectionists). Sorry, that's what they want, to irritate liberals. Congrats douche nozzles. 

Spoiler: And the murdered in Still Life is a little like Putin. It's his fears that make him murder--that prove they were totally unnecessary. His paranoia gave him away, and made his fears come true. Putin thinks Ukraine joining NATO would hurt him, and now Finland and Sweden are rushing to join NATO to protect them against Russia's aggression (Source).