Best Day of the Summer: Louise Penny Launches Her Newest Book

Somehow it's always a glorious summer day -- we cross the border into Canada and the magic of the "pre-release" launch of Louise Penny's new book makes the day sparkly.

Or, as Brome Lake Books bookseller Danny McAuley and his wife Lucy Hoblyn proclaimed yesterday, "Welcome to the Global Launch of The Nature of the Beast!"

Hosted by Danny and Lucy at the Knowlton Community Center, the event filled 250 seats plus standing room along the edges. Louise Penny's "patent pending" assistant Lise helped people prepare their books for the author's signature. Young French-speaking adolescents beamed at a table promoting the Alzheimer's Society (Societé), a cause dear to this author's heart and family. And I overheard in the front row two women swapping biographic details of this author whose Quebec-set mysteries, with their depth of human understanding, have become such a treasure for readers around the world. As the author herself noted,

Really, like most of [my] books, it's not really about murder -- it's about community and friendship and love and lots more ... it's about the stories we tell ourselves that allow us to get out of bed and that propel us forward.

Penny noted that the main plot point of The Nature of the Beast -- and she was very careful not to say much, wanting readers to enjoy the book without "spoilers" -- is something she found out about, some 25 years ago, and held onto. "I had to figure out a way to tell the story that would make sense, and also that would make it my own."

The one aspect of the book that she would confirm, prompted by a question from Danny McAuley, was that it discloses the back-story of much-loved character Ruth in the Inspector Gamache mysteries.

As usual, the event featured the charm of seeing Danny, a devoted bookseller and friend, interview this accomplished journalist and crime fiction author. Danny and his family and friends also entertained the crowd with three very effective and humorous skits from earlier Penny work, especially A Trick of the Light, on stage. After performing as "characters" from the books, the group then gave the author assorted "welcome to your new home" gifts, as she and her husband Michael have announced a move to the town of Knowlton. Among the well-chosen items were a "ducky" keychain (if you know the books, you know this reflects the character Ruth!) and a Knowlton High School sweatshirt.

Also mentioned: the team's current project on "The Real Places of Three Pines" (Louise Penny said, "It's kind of a virtual bistro!"), which can be followed at Gamacheseries.com; the need for protecting the author's privacy and writing time in her new location; and the human values of Penny's fictional town of Three Pines -- in Penny's words:

The books -- yes it's about terror and it's about violence, but it's also balanced with love and with the choices we can make. ... It takes so much more courage to be a decent human being than to make the cutting remark, and that's what [husband] Michael does, and [main character retired Chief Inspector of the Sureté] Gamache.

I'll post a review of the book later in the week. For today, Dave is scrambling to make a signed copy of this one -- and of the recently released anniversary edition, from Britain, of the author's first book Still Life -- available at our ABE site.

If I get a moment later today, I'll also pass along Penny's startling description of herself at age 8! Come on back for more.

Louise Penny and Brome Lake Books, A Rare Partnership

Yesterday Dave and I drove eagerly north, across the border into Canada, for the pre-release book party for Louise Penny's new Armand Gamache investigation, A LONG WAY HOME. I'll write about the book later -- today I'll share some of the event instead, hosted in Louise Penny's home neighborhood by Danny McAuley and Lucy Hoblyn of Brome Lake Books.

There can't be many partnerships of author and local bookshop as close as the one that Louise and Danny and Lucy share. Louise tucks bits of description of the shop into her Three Pines books; Danny and Lucy provide a special section of their shop in honor of this author, complete with a pair of comfortable reading chairs and an inscribed book table, as well as the cozy wall decor shown here.

And the respect and intelligent understanding between Louise Penny and Danny McAuley was especially evident in yesterday's on-stage conversation, where Danny asked the questions and Louise provided thoughtful responses that kept us riveted. Here are some examples:

[Danny recalled listening on the radio on the day when Louise announced her departure from a 20-year career at CBC, the Canadian national radio broadcasting firm.] Louise, smiling: "I don't think it's a complete coincidence that I spent 20 years at CBC and went on to write about murder. I also think the more screwed up you are, the better writer you are -- again, the CBC came in handy." She then turned serious and spoke of the "amazing acts of forgiveness" that she also witnessed in that job.

[Danny probed her time and efforts with research.] "A lot of it is good luck, I have to say, or grace." But it also involves following chains of interesting information. For example, the mention of the "Balm in Gilead" in Penny's new book was originally based on her visceral reaction to a long prayer expressed by a father in Marilynne Robinson's literary novel Gilead. But then she heard the hymn "There Is a Balm in Gilead" chanted, and it moved her in a new way. "I heard it when I needed to hear it, and I made note of it." The results are in the pages.

[Danny noted the use of a Canadian artist's work for the book jacket and asked about her connections to art and her research in that area.] Penny immediately confessed that her own upbringing focused on books, not art -- which instead comes into her life through her husband Michael, who is both an artist and a well-educated art appreciator. She watches her husband look at art, and listens hard to how he speaks of what he sees. "And that's what I write about -- I write about the emotions that art invokes, not about art itself."

[Likewise, Penny borrows her cooking expertise through both book research and the people around her.] "I don't cook -- at all, as Michael will tell you -- but I love eating, and I love food." So she writes with cookbooks around her, as well as poetry. "I want the books to be sensuous."

[What about the wonderful way in which significant bits of earlier books in her series come up in later titles and turn out to be related to the underlying plot?] "There are bits in Still Life [the first Armand Gamache investigation] and others that don't come to fruition until much later." But it isn't always because Penny planned it that way -- she also goes back to earlier books looking for details that she notes with "Oh, I could use this!"

[Danny's pursuit of what lies under this newest book led to Louise's reflections:] "The Long Way Home is really inspired initially by Homer's The Odyssey." She went back to re-read it, contemplating "the hero's journey" in it, as well as in her own high school love for Conrad's Heart of Darkness. In the newest book, Clara the artist persuades Gamache to help her try to find her missing husband Peter, and, says Penny, "the search for Peter is most of all the search for ourselves."

Many thanks to Danny, Lucy, and their team, as well as author Louise Penny, for an amazing afternoon. (Looking for a signed copy of the new book? Watch our ABE listings (link in right-hand column); Dave will be adding some this evening, and more on Monday and Tuesday, with the book's official release on August 26. Or, of course, you could treat yourself to a trip to Canada to visit Brome Lake Books -- where, Danny admits, lost wanderers sometimes arrive, looking for Penny's fictional town of Three Pines. They are pretty close together!)

Another Reason to Visit Brome Lake Books in Knowlton, Quebec, Canada

Dave and I are still savoring yesterday's trip "across the border" into the Eastern Townships of Canada, to attend crime fiction author Louise Penny's pre-release launch of THE BEAUTIFUL MYSTERY, eighth in her Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series. One of the delights for Dave especially was meeting the owners and staff of Brome Lake Books -- welcoming, knowledgeable book lovers with whom Dave had spoken several times as we prepared for our journey north.

Brome Lake Books has an address on the main street in Knowlton, a delightful arts-focused town. The shop is tucked toward the back of a small strip of stores, and in Hobbit-home fashion, opens from a small entryway into more and more shelves of books, arranged for tempting browsing. (There's also a sale room in the lower floor.) Danny McAuley, Lucy Hoblyn, and others greeted us and I have drawn a complete blank on the name of the person who painstakingly wrapped our "Vive Gamache" café au lait mugs that I'd been so eager to purchase -- I was SO excited to be there -- but she made me feel great about my purchase.

Brome Lake Books is glad to ship books abroad, too. Notice this shelf full of books in French? This is a great asset for collectors stepping into the magical world of "foreign editions." Here at the Kingdom Books blog, we often compare American and British cover designs of mysteries. But actually there are many cover designs for those books that get into print in multiple languages. They're often a delight to gather on a shelf, as we have with a collection of Eliot Pattison's books here. In addition, even if you speak or read only a bit of another language, it's fascinating to compare the versions, to see how translation does or doesn't change the text. This is increasingly significant with work by Scandinavian crime fiction authors today, as American readers become accustomed to a dark and somber ambience reflecting ice-bound or darkened countrysides -- and wonder, in turn, whether "all those Scandianavian authors" actually write in that mode, or whether the shadows are being emphasized by the translators. It's also nice to give translators some credit for their labors!

So if you're really getting involved with Louise Penny's books, consider calling Brome Lake Books and asking the booksellers' advice on where to start with her French editions. You'll get thoughtful conversation, good suggestions, and -- when your copies arrive -- a new aspect to your bookshelves and your reflections on today's best mysteries.

Oh yes, and here's a comment I can't resist, for a 1994 Los Angeles Times article: "[Herb] Yellin, 59, also collects presidential documents and movie memorabilia, but it's his library that gets most of his attention. 'I've been acquiring foreign-language editions of Ray Bradbury's books. That's when you know you're over the edge, when you start collecting foreign editions.'"

Louise Penny, THE BEAUTIFUL MYSTERY: "Pre-Launched" Today in Knowlton, Quebec

Kingdom Books is just an hour south of Vermont's Canada border -- and two hours from the town of Knowlton, Quebec, a charming arts center easily confused with the mystical and murder-prone village of Three Pines in Louise Penny's award-winning crime fiction. Today we rambled north to the home turf of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, for Brome Lake Books hosting of the author's "pre-launch" of her newest book. THE BEAUTIFUL MYSTERY.  The title officially releases on Tuesday (Aug. 28), so it's a thrill to hold the earliest available copies (now signed! -- and at least one will be available tomorrow online from Kingdom Books).

It's too soon to talk a lot about the book -- I'm only two chapters into it, because so much of the day was spent driving (smile) and savoring French Canadian food (yumm). But this eighth in the series begins with the mystery of why and how music moves us, and proceeds to exactly the kind of mystery you'd expect a member of the Sureté du Quebec to investigate -- and more.

Louise Penny said today, ""My books are really about belonging, about the quest to belong, about love and friendship and second chances." In keeping with her pattern of alternating settings for the Gamache series, one book in Three Pines, the next outside it (to avoid too many bodies piling up in the village), Penny placed this one in a monastery in the Eastern Townships of Quebec province.

"I'm aware that one of the dangers of writing a series is that, inadvertently, you can keep writing the same book. So it's important to me to keep on taking chances," the author explained. She said she left behind her "safety zone" of Three Pines to go forward with just Gamache, who in this volume tests his own assertion from an earlier book that "This center will hold."

Penny also answered audience questions about a Gamache TV film in progress, based on her first two books, with filming starting in October. She is excited about the director and the directions worked out, and is an executive producer for the film. What does that mean?  "For me, being the executive producer is a lot like being the Queen of England," she dead-panned. "I can have opinions but I'm not allowed to declare war."

She usually takes some time off work in winter and begins writing a new book in March, so he is now in the third draft of a probable five or six for her next Gamache book, which returns, of course, to Three Pines as a locale.

The village of Three Pines -- err, that is, the town of Knowlton, Quebec, provided literally three pine trees as backdrop for the event, and they will be planted on the grounds of the community center where this event took place. Penny admitted she plans "an infinite number" of books for the series, so odds are good she'll be back at the community center for many title releases yet to come.

This year's event also included an amazing rendition of a "chant" (honoring the Gregorian ones featured in the new book) describing the Three Pines series, complete with setting and characters (Penny told the audience she tries to be even-handed among her characters, including Clara, whom she originally thought would be the amateur sleuth of the series, as well as Gabri and Gamache, but "I love Myrna -- she is someone I would like to have as a friend). The chant was written and performed wonderfully by Brome Lake Books owners Danny McAuley and Lucy Hoblyn with friends and family, accompanied by McAuley's mother-in-law on an organ! Louise Penny rose merrily at two cameo appearances in the performance, clearly enjoying the surprise, as did the audience.

Beth Mallon and Susan Jensen

It's a fitting tribute to Penny's books (and bubbly personality) that audience members included many who drove hours to be there -- Kingdom Books was honored and thrilled to be named by Danny McAuley at the outset of the event, along with Toronto's "Sleuth of Baker Street," but people also came from Ottawa, from Cambridge (England), and from New York state. The line for Penny's signatures lasted well over an hour, catered with food and drink by boys on best behavior offering Perrier and canapés. Dave enjoyed reconnecting with documentary filmmaker Louise Abbott and her husband and work partner Neils Jensen, and I was "found" by my long-time neighbors and friends from West Barnet, Vermont, Beth Mallon and Susan Jensen. These two teachers savored the opportunity to use some of the last of their summer break in coming to meet Louise Penny and capturing her new book. While waiting in line, they were both reading -- and had reached page 10 as this photo was snapped. Hurrah for Vermont's book community, as well as for Louise Penny, Brome Lake Books, and -- THE BEAUTIFUL MYSTERY.