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Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, head of the homicide department at Montreal's Sûreté du Québec..... Clearly A World of Curiosities is not cozy crime even if Three Pines does have the vibe of being a rural idyll. The issue of child abuse that features in the early chapters might be off-putting to some readers but it’s handled with sensitivity and minimal detail. She was an engineer, she told herself as she prepared for her morning run. A rational human being. But then so was her aunt. Did Auntie Myrna even do it? Or had it been a joke the timid child had taken to heart? In the end, unsurprisingly, Robert did not succeed in his quest for gold, and the family fortunes continued to dwindle. Only two generations after The Paston Treasure was painted, the splendor of Oxnead Hall disappeared like a mirage. Along with the house went the remains of the magnificent collection, its gradual dispersal necessitating the reunion of objects from across the world for the exhibition. More than fifty lenders have made the evocation of the original Paston treasures possible.
Virtuoso… blends nuanced characterization with nail-biting suspense…This tale of forgiveness and redemption will resonate with many.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
I have dispatcht this chimicall embassador to let thee knowe that I am passing well, but what I shall returne home I am a little doubtfull. One while we are Italians, Another while Tur’ks, by & by Egiptians, & eftsoones merry Greeks, but all very well and handsome . . . I might spend another week and not see all the rarityes. Indeed heer is a world of curiosityes & some very rich ones, as cabinets & Juells.” Virtuoso… blends nuanced characterization with nail-biting suspense…This tale of forgiveness and redemption will resonate with many.”— Publishers Weekly (starred review) First, the novel appears to be philosophically inconsistent. Unlike other detective fiction, Louise Penny’s books try to be serious about life, beauty, suffering, and death, even if they end up being terribly cavalier with the lives of side characters. With Gamache interpreting the world for us, we understand that good is powerful, that love can redeem relationships, and that trust, though often betrayed, is usually productive. Yet Gamache also says about a ten year old child that he was born bad and that circumstances made him unfixable. The novel tries to maintain through Fiona’s story that trauma produces traumatized behavior that can be redeemed, but then it also insists through Gamache’s instincts about Sam that an abused and neglected ten year old is forever someone to be suspicious of because he probably loves being bad. Fiona’s decision to betray and then to save the Gamache family is also left under-explored; she seemingly sacrifices the life she’s built for no reason other than family ties (as her father turns out to be serial killer John Fleming). The novel explains her decision to betray and then to help rescue Gamache in a throwaway line about having crossed too many lines. But murder was always the plan, and Fiona and Sam both seemed in on it. Why? And how? What were her lines? But he, of course, did none of those things. Instead, with immense stillness, he continued to stare. To take in every detail. What could be seen, and what could not. For Penny, the novel is a narrative tour de force, drawing brilliantly on some dark moments in Québec history and leading Gamache and the residents of Three Pines to a hard-won, thoroughly unsentimental recognition that forgiveness is our most powerful magic.”— Booklist (starred review)
A World of Curiosities” is Penny’s 18th novel, not counting “State of Terror,” the bestselling 2021 thriller she co-wrote with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. I’d rate most of them in the 3-4 star range: they’re engrossing but flawed. The series’ hero worship of Gamache is always too cloying, and it starts out strong in this novel with the narrator reminding us how good, kind, and honest Gamache is. Although he’s been exposed, as the head of homicide, to the worst of humanity, the novel tells us that Gamache remains hopeful, compassionate, and relatively emotionally healthy. I should add that he remains all this even when the series has taken some of the people closest to Gamache and turned them into murderers. For me, that’s a cheap and unrealistic plot device that the series overrelies on. When Chief Inspector Armand Gamache first had Jean-Guy Beauvoir in his sights, Jean-Guy was a green, arrogant young man although Armand could see something in him that he wanted to nurture. The first case they worked together was a horrific one - the abuse of two young children and the death of their mother. Now, all those years later, those two young people were in Three Pines and Armand was uneasy. But it was when a long hidden room was discovered, one that had been hidden for one hundred and fifty years, that events in the lives of the Three Pines villagers, as well as Armand, Jean-Guy and the Surete du Quebec investigators, changed.a b "The Paston Treasure, Microcosm of the Known World / East Anglia Art Fund". Eastangliaartfund.org.uk . Retrieved 28 February 2017. Penny delves into the nature of evil, sensitively exploring the impact of the dreadful events she describes while bringing a warmth and humanity to her disparate cast of characters that, unusually for a crime novel, leaves you feeling better about the world once you’ve finished’ BOOK OF THE MONTH, OBSERVER
On the real world side of the ledger, I found her depiction of one psychopath completely unnerving. So many books labeled as "psychological thrillers" these days are, IMNSHO, duds, leaving me with the feeling that the victims (typically women) are simplistic idiots. Not so here! In a few scenes scattered throughout the book, the menace bubbling below the surface of this character made my hair stand on end. The early books each featured a murder case that was solved within the book but there was also a storyline that ran across several titles. This dealt with the Chief’s suspicions of a conspiracy within the heart of the Sûreté. In Still Life, bestselling author Louise Penny introduces Monsieur L'Inspecteur Armand Gamache of the Surete du Quebec, a modern Poirot who anchors this beloved traditional mystery series Feels like Penny is taking the first steps into woman activism. Taking on misogyny, patriarchy, government complicity in perpetrating same is a grand and applauded endeavor. But it feels scattershot and ineffective in such a complicated story. And our beloved Three Pines women aren't the firebrand women rights champions we need for a story that covers that mission. I think that's why we see so many new women characters. Gamache isn't up to carrying that mission alone. Myrna had the best opportunity to lead this arc, but she is...in love. Feels as though that makes her less effective in the plot. Actually I think Rosa was important to add some levity to the whole thing, otherwise it would have been so so heavy.I was happy to see the return of Amelia. I really hated how she got jettisoned like 6 books ago, she was a welcome addition (IMHO) to the series. I enjoyed the novel, my major criticism being too much talk about evil people 'getting into' Gamache's head and doing damage, which seemed like psychobabble. Still, this is a good book, recommended to fans of the series. This is, at a glance, many of Goodreads Penny fans’ favorite book. It’s obviously well-crafted and very ambitious, (though maybe too much so; see below), as Penny tries to connect the dots between all sorts of important historical and fictional entities:
a b c "A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny". Publishers Weekly. 24 Aug 2022 . Retrieved 2023-03-26. There can’t be a story in Three Pines that doesn’t include food. While the meals may be simpler than in some previous books, still one is tempted by chilled pea soup, grilled Gruyère and sweet onion sandwiches; salmon, fresh-cut asparagus, baby potatoes, and green salad with vinaigrette; charbroiled steak with chimichurri sauce and frites; and wild mushroom ravioli with sage brown butter. In the following years Gamache and his wife Reine-Marie take Fiona under their wings, and make her feel like part of their family in Three Pines. Now Fiona and another young woman from Three Pines, Harriet Landers - niece of bookstore owner Myrna Landers - are graduating from engineering school and the village plans a big celebration. Despite that darkness, or maybe because of it, this book rises above the seventeen that precede it—forcing me into a conundrum. This is a 5-star book, but I don’t give 5 stars to series books…right?
Excerpt
The Paston Treasure: Microcosm of the Known World | Yale Center for British Art". britishart.yale.edu. Archived from the original on 17 September 2017. In a separate plot thread, Gamache is called upon to solve the mystery of a secret room discovered in the attic of the village bookstore. Inside, the villagers discover a long lost copy of a “grimoire” an old book thought to have been used by witches to summon demons. Nearby is a huge painting. This is my 17th Louise Penny. It should be my 18th but I did miss one when I first discovered this series and raced through many of the early books and now I can't quite figure out which one I missed or skipped when I could not get it in a timely manner from the library. Most have been on audio.
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