Louise Penny, "A Better Man"

what a great turnout for for Louise penny there aren't many mystery writers or authors of any sort who can draw the size of an audience these days her popularity and the evident enthusiasm and continued support by so many fans like like yourselves are testament to Louisa standing as one of the most accomplished mystery writers practicing the craft today now many of you no doubt know Louise's own story how she came to her career as an author's somewhat serendipitously working initially as a journalist and radio host for the Canadian broadcast company after eighteen years in journalism she quit at the age of 35 thinking she'd write a great historical novel but then suffered five years of writer's block binging binging on gummy bears and Oprah reruns one day as she recalls it she looked at her bedside table brimming with books by Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers and had the Epiphany that the detective genre was her calling the character of Armand Gamache chief inspector of the sûreté du Quebec soon arrived in her imagination and her first novel still life appeared fourteen years ago her newest book a better man is the 15th in the series and so if you do the math you'll realize she's been turning out novels at the rate of one a year and winning lots and lots of honors along the way what's distinguished the series is not just as compelling often often quirky cast of characters out of the out-of-the-way setting and in the fictional village of Three Pines and references to the history of Louise's historical references to the history of Louise's native Canada but the focus on the why of the crime as much or more than the how Louise's own experiences living through some dark times coping with loneliness self-hatred and an alcoholism which you did years ago afforded firsthand glimpses into the kinds of emotions that that may drive some people to it's a criminal action but having since enjoyed a much happiness and success louise has spoken of her profound belief that goodness exists in the world indeed a New York Times profile of Louise last year described her as an unfailingly curing detective writer who nonetheless is a ruthless killer I am a killing machine but a happy one she was quoted in The Times as saying I get all my resentments out in my books as Louise says in the acknowledgments of a better man her books are essentially about community about love and belonging about the great gift of friendship and now she's about to when I give give a whole story away but maybe give a few hints about what happens to Kumasi and your other favorite folks in Three Pines when with floodwaters rising across the province a distraught father appears pleading for help in finding his daughter ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming Louise penny [Applause] thank you so much for coming on this is the debut you are the first ones I am so pleased to be celebrating this with you and the first the pub date for for a better man which has been a long time coming as I don't know if any of you follow me on Facebook some of you do so you saw me lying on the better man the other day what I would love to do actually before before we get too far into this I would love to take a photograph of all of you so get to it this is partly for my publisher to prove that I actually did show up all right just a second here we go I took a selfie [Applause] right now I have to do want to get a picture of you guys because you're so attracted so much more attractive than the other audiences and then later I want to take a picture of you with Rosa who I've decided I've decided to take Rosa on tour with me I was it was um an odd sort of thing I was having a bubble bath the other day did you know you get used to that your surroundings you no longer really notice what's happening my I don't know about you but it's certainly the case with me any number of bubble baths in this particular bath and I suddenly looked up over the bubbles and said there's a duck soup in there for years never noticed it so then I thought well that's got to be Rosa so I decided to bring her with me on tour I'm taking different pictures will have Rosa being frisked at security tomorrow Rose on the plane and so on and then right now Rosa is here I want to thank Brad and Brittany and everybody else from politics and prose you are so fortunate to have one of the great independence in the world not just and as he said you know it's always such a shock it just says if you could see yourself from where I'm standing it is extraordinary and nobody expects to walk out certainly no author expects to walk out and see so many people unrelated to them cuz I have to tell you when I first started I wanted to be a writer since the age of 8 so I had essentially 40 years because the first book came out when I was in my mid-40s I had about 40 years to imagine what a book tour would be like so I'd written this book and I'll go back to how that happened but I finally wrote the end which is an amazing thing to feel that you've actually finished the book but then I didn't actually know how to get it published so I went to my local independent bookstore and I said to the clerk you will never guess what has happened I have finished my first book and she said oh my god that is fabulous congratulations would you like to buy another one her name was Jennifer but I like to say if that if I was getting into being an author because my ego was demanding it that was a shot right across the bow so that's but I finally finished it and I actually you know found publisher and blob and I'll go into some more detail but I do want to tell you that the first book tour which is why it's so extraordinary to stand here and see all of you so I still life is about to come out it's about two weeks before and I had been again bubble baths practicing my Oprah interview which I'm sure was imminent oh good question Oprah we would become best friends she would fly me around and then I'd finally have to unfriend her because he's very clingy I haven't heard from the publisher yet so funny I wasn't worried because I know that private jets and and you know penthouse suites they take time to organize chauffeurs so but about two weeks ten days before the book came out I called him up and I said mr. Martin I am ready for my tour and he said who is this and I said Louise penny and he said we're not gonna send you on tour because it's your debut and nobody's read the book nobody knows who you are and nobody wants to see you exactly that did not sound right to me so when I got off the phone I said to my husband Michael I said Michael I said we should take the entire advance for still life and with it we will buy lunch and over lunch we will discuss sending me on tour and pay for it ourselves and god bless the man he said that's a great idea we'll do that so we went to McDonald's and we organized the whole thing so I went to any place that would have me I weeded all over North America we went and you know what the publisher was right there are times I counted who was in the audience and it came to zero and the but you know that wasn't so bad I mean you know humiliation aside and is it really humiliation if there's no one there to witness it and you can always Michel and I could always sit to pretend that this was all part of the long-range plan its falling in exactly as we had hoped I mean who really wants readers on a book tour anyway and we would get to go for dinner early the problem came when one person showed up right and she's sitting right where you're sitting yes hello again looking very nice smiling and she's beautiful and but then she realizes she's all alone if you know that moment cuz I'm standing here and she's sitting there and there's not a sound behind us which she but she can't leave she's already there she's sitting down I'm up here and frankly we both wished she would just drop dead so I I wish I could stand here and say that that was my first book to her was essentially my first three book tours which now I can look back and laugh at the time it genuinely was not all that funny because you just wonder am I ever going to get traction is it ever gonna happen is anyone gonna start reading the books and and I know some of you started very very early and some of you god bless you have come on afterward and helped with the word of mouth but or those first few years were we're a grind so no part of me walks out here today and I need this sincerely and takes any of you in any of these seats for granted and I am deeply grateful to you for for coming out tonight for supporting the series for spreading the word about our MA and and Ren Murray and all of the others and I have a very clear sense that while Three Pines is a village not on any map it's only ever found by people lost who are meant to find it I feel the same way about the books that we are a community all of us that those of you who are here who were meant to find the books did and so there's a special connection I feel to all of you I simply wrote with still life and the subsequent books a book I wanted to read and if anyone else wanted to join me god bless them and you were the ones who wanted to join me so we're all we're all in this together and I have a very because I am a reader obviously as well I know that reading is as creative as writing that it takes both that that I steer and you paddle but it takes both of us to get to where we're going to go I get the royalties so thank you very much for that I'd love to do is talk a little bit not that I'm not already about how the books came to be how I came to be a writer and then open it up for questions because frankly for me that's the most interesting part it's got the most dynamic to hear what your questions are so and again it's it's the it's we're a team we're in this together so yeah what I want to do is tell you a little bit about where the series came from and it came from my own experiences I was he said I wanted to write since I was 8 and I could tell you exactly when and I know you're thinking oh my god she's going back to when she's and she's like 60 this is gonna be a really long evening and we can't leave but fortunately for you it is a riveting story so there I was I was 8 and I was I was always I was a lonely child I know is it was something that I put on myself I was never excluded I was never made to feel lonely I came out of the womb just afraid now I've gone even back even further now I'm a fetus right it's not going and now then I'm gonna start talking about past lives so get comfortable but I was I was just I was afraid of everything I was afraid of the dark not unusual I was afraid of too much sunlight I was afraid of heights I was afraid of holes I was hugely afraid of other children I was afraid of adults I was just afraid of everything probably my cardinal fear was spiders which again is not unusual I think it probably bordered on a phobia for me my favorite place to be because I was such a fearful child again I was so fortunate that I was never given a reason to be afraid I was brought up by a very loving family however I did feel I was adopted but then I think many people my real mother the Queen still hasn't come for me I had a crush on Prince Charles which once I looked at the Mendel table was a little confusing but I was I was eight and I was in my room because that's where I wanted to be it was the only place I felt safe I felt sovereign the only place I felt really comfortable and happy in my own skin was sitting on my bed reading and to be honest it is still my favorite place in the world today is in my bedroom on the bed reading a book Michael used to call me a horizontal list spend the whole day just trying to get my feet up on something so I was it was got so bad that when I was naughty as a child which wasn't awful but it did happen every now and then as punishment my mother would send me outside to play I was reading in my room Charlotte's Web now it's possible I was a slightly slow child because I think I was about halfway through Charlotte's Web before I realized but Charlotte was a spider now to be fair to my eight-year-old self I don't think I was quite that thick but what happened in that instant was life-changing literally life-changing I can feel still the the nubbly bedspread underneath me because what happened in that instant was that I realized I loved Charlotte I loved the spider and I wanted nothing bad to happen to her and to this day I still I don't love spiders but I will not harm them and for a child whose entire day was prescribed by the least fearful thing to do to has the most most fearful thing lifted in that instant was magic it was power beyond imagining and I understood that the magic emanated from the story from the book it was contained between the covers and from that moment on I knew I would be a lifelong reader if it was that powerful what else could storytelling do what else could books give me but if reading was that powerful how wonderful must writing be so I pledged at that moment I would become a writer now of course reading Charlotte's Web my my fear of spiders was lifted to be immediately replaced by a fear of writing so I didn't I didn't write at all but I broke but I had to write but I didn't I wasn't one of those children who wrote stories all the time not as a teenager not even into my twenties I seriously was afraid of failing I was afraid of trying the one thing I know I was put on this earth to do in case I was wrong in case it turned out that I couldn't do it so I took an ancillary course and I became a journalist and it that was a godsend as well because I got to listen to people I got to travel got to interview people I got to hear the most extraordinary stories got to hear stories of such fridge rage some people have I don't need to tell you about some of the rage that is is floating around free-floating in the world today not just here but everywhere except for that kiss between Milania and but I also got to hear some extraordinary moment some moments and that more than I couldn't tell you right now any exact instances of anger but I can tell you a moment of forgiveness that will never leave me I was I was talking to a mother there was a trial murder trial long and I was interviewing the mother of the victim the victim was a little girl and she said in the course of the interview I didn't ask because it would never occur to me to ask but she volunteered that she had forgiven the person who had done this which wasn't to say that she ever wanted to see him again but she wanted to sit down for dinner with him that they she wanted to be friends she made the clear distinction between forgiveness and friendship but that she had let that go because she had to she had to get on with her life she had to forgive it and I remember staring at her I can see her now in front of me in all that I should be of the same species as someone who is capable of that and I could see that it was genuine it was so inspiring and that's what I try to bring to the books not least these extraordinary acts because we can't really relate to such extraordinary acts but the fact that it is possible this forgiveness is possible that goodness exists that hope the thing at the bottom of Pandora's Box exists those have all inspired the books and they're thanks to the journalism so the fact that I actually lived with these great fears actually ended up to be a great blessing because without them the books as they are right now wouldn't exist I finally I was covering Quebec politics and we had a referendum the second one on Quebec sovereignty you were probably somewhat familiar with with Quebec politics [Music] and it came it came so close and I was covering I was doing the the national coverage the night of the the vote so I was live on air and we had been warned by the no side which was the Federalists side which were the people who wanted Quebec to stay in Canada the head of the no side got in touch with with us and said we are going to lose and Quebec is going to separate which was a bit of a blow of course I mean I as a journalist I should have been impartial but the fact is I as an Anglo Quebecer I I cared very deeply about this but we went on and we did the coverage and it turned out that the no side won but by the slimmest of margins that it nobody felt like there was a winner everybody felt shattered everybody was came out of that bruised and I just staggered along after that I was just exhausted by by our politics and I know can you believe it I'm standing in Washington saying that Canadian politics brought me to my knees I'm very weak but my feel again god bless and I came home one day and and he said you know if you would like I know you've always wanted to write a book if you want to quit work in order to write that book he said the most beautiful thing it was almost as great as the first time he said I love you not quite as as wonderful as that nothing ever could be but he said if you want to quit work I'll support you it's not beautiful thank God he meant financially so I quit work and then as Brad said immediately suffered five years of writer's block five five you know three would have been enough five five got to the stage where Michael was afraid when he'd come home from work to ask me how the book was going you know you know you're in trouble it was like my mother when I hit 35 and I wasn't married yet and she'd stopped asking me about have you met any nice man lately any women any farm animals interesting anything so she stopped asking and Michael stopped asking about the book but as a journalist I realize when you cover events and most of them of course as a journalist are often tragic and you do the post-mortem afterward at the immediate moment of the event it appears to come out of the blue but then once you start looking and deconstructing what happened you realize it is actually a cascade of smaller events often smaller often easily overlooked events that had to happen often in the order in which they happened in order for the larger thing to come about the same is true of wonderful things and I look back at what actually brought me here today standing in front of you oh and broke that writer's block and it was a series of apparently unrelated events what was it Michael and I moved out of the of the city into a small village some of you might recognize my publisher or journalists come well I mean I like it when they come to visit but I know that they then realized that I have no imagination so we moved into this village and then I fell in with a group of women we call ourselves League girls get together once a month and they're all creative they're dancers and poets and artists and sculptors and and and musicians and they just incredibly creative and bold women and they talk about the process and they asked me to join them and I had to say you know I'm not actually writing anything and they said well do you consider yourself a writer no I thought that was a really good question and it really gave me pause and I finally gamed of them and I said yes I do and they said that's good because nobody nobody else gets to define who you are if you feel you're a writer even if for the your entire life you never put a word on paper you are still a writer you get to decide so we got together and I got to listen to them talk about what they're working on and the fact that it is a process for some reason I thought I had to get it right from the get-go but from the moment I sat down the first word on the paper had to be perfect right to the last word and if it wasn't that meant that there was something wrong with the story and certainly something wrong with me so I was paralyzed I was paralyzed with fear they taught me that you can't get it right the first time you shouldn't get it right the first time it's a process you the painter goes back and over paints and over paste and sometimes tosses it away and then moves on to the next one using that as a building block as as a learning tool moving on and building on it and building on it until they get to where they need to be the last thing that happened was this is so prosaic I know you won't tell anyone cuz it's embarrassing again I was lying in bed reading or actually about Trina I looked over onto the bedside table the nightstand and there was a pile of books and like probably most of you I read small see Catholic Lee I read fiction and nonfiction and poetry and cookbooks and biography and but very well-represented was crime fiction and I had again one of those moments that my good friend Oprah we've never actually met she's she's very sad about that but the Chi would call an aha moment and I a couple of things came together at that moment probably the most profound the stayed with me was I understood then what a role and what a tyranny the approval of others had been in my life but that was part of what was paralyzing me was it wasn't so much the fear of failure as the fear of not being approved of of people not liking what I was writing particularly my mother my my brothers my my teachers my former colleagues for sure I mean anyone strangers on the street they mattered more to me than then my actual writing the woman who voices my GPS recalculating [Music] [Laughter] and I understood then that if I was going to get to where I needed to be in this world I had to set that aside I had to not care about what others thought about me I had to simply write a book I would read me nobody not worry about what anybody else thought not worry about whether it was even published but the contract with my eight-year-old self wasn't that it be published wasn't that it even be any good just let it be written so I went straight down I understood then what I wanted to write was a crime novel crime fiction because I love reading crime fiction just read a book that I would write a book I would love to read I went down to the kitchen table and drew out a map of Three Pines now I have to say that the other thing that really inspired me was 9/11 I started writing shortly after 9/11 and I know that it wasn't a coincidence and I am you know I'm not gonna stand here and say that as a Canadian I was in any way as profoundly affected by it as any of you but it it affected the whole world and I think one of the ways it affected everybody all of humanity was the sense that no place is safe that you can be going around doing perfectly innocent and something dreadful happens and we see it time and again too with the shootings you just don't know you don't know when something bad is going to happen so I wanted and I was feeling like the rest of you very vulnerable even though I'm living in a small village you it can't help how you feel so I wanted to create a place that would be safe clearly not physically safe because I got that wrong but that wasn't the point that what what makes three Pines a safe place because that was the lesson I think well you know there were so many of them that came out of 9/11 the heroism but one of the lessons is that no place is safe you cannot guarantee your physical safety three pines offers emotional safety it offers spiritual safety and it offers it because of the sense of community of belonging that when dreadful things happen you're not alone how powerful is that you're not alone that's what I wanted to create with Three Pines and I created it just for myself but I also had a sense a clear sense that if I feel something there's a pretty good chance other people do I am right in the middle of the bell curve there's nothing extraordinary about me at all if I am wearing clothing there's pretty good chance everybody else is wearing exactly the same thing if I'm looking at something that someone's wearing thinking oh my god that looks awful I can guarantee you within six months I'm wearing it and then another six months after that it's passe because I'm also a bit of the what is that the Dove in the in the mineshaft if if I discover something it's like too late so that's what I wanted to do though with free pines was create a place with a sense of safety a sense of belonging as Brad referred to the books aren't really about murder of course they're about friendship they're about love and all of its forms I mean people asked about Rosa the dot and I think it's often used in reviews in a slightly disparaging way you know the the mad poet and her duck and I think that's often done by people who aren't reading the books very deeply but the duck Rosa is an allegory I mean most of Three Pines is an allegory the duck came about because as proof or as a reflection of of love in all of its forms whether it is a man and a woman whether it is Gamache and Beauvoir the father son the mentor mentee relationship which is really the love relationship at the center of these these books whether it is man for man woman woman the animals whether it's a lonely old poet and her duck that the duck is a symbol of love that's what that's what Rosa is got quite a mouth on her as well not the lover I would choose so that's that's really what I wanted to create and I created a village I would choose to live in I created characters I would choose his friends because I didn't think the books would be published I thought the only reward I was going to get was in the writing of it which would take a couple of years and in fact it did and then it came time to choose the main character and I heard that Christie had grown weary of Poirot and I thought no how do i you know in case the books really are published and they become a series and I live with it the rest of my life I don't want to get tired of my main character so how do I mitigate against that and something that occurred to me so I thought you know I will just create a man I would marry and so that's what I did and I was feeling very proud of myself when I went downstairs to breakfast one day and there was Michael talking about world peace or something like that I didn't create Gamache I transcribed the man I did try to convince him that he was Ruth but he was having none of that [Music] what I'd love to do now is open you open it up for question you've been very patient with me prattling on I'd love to open it up for questions I think that there are microphones at the front they're the only thing I would ask is that you not give anything away in the books because you know the books are so intertwined at this stage that the character development issues are hello are you know as much spoilers as the plot so if you could maybe try to be careful in you know I'm thinking that maybe just a series of compliments [Laughter] [Applause] let's start over what makes you so fabulous now I grew up in the Toronto area and so I'm sure you get this question so much when you do these tours in Canada but you know being out of Canada for a long time I'm curious as to why you as an Anglophone chose the francophone as your main character and especially since I'm uh so of the age to remember when there was actually martial law right in Canada right and people were being killed kidnapped and murdered right bombs were going off in Quebec yeah yeah and I guess just related to that do you get any pushback from the French Canadians about you oh it's us Anglophone who is suited ah and who is why she's got such a bad French accent would you put more effort in that's an interesting question I have honestly it is perplexing to me as well you can I consider myself strong independent feminist I have no idea why I have chosen to my main character as not only francophone but a man I honestly don't I cannot explain how that happened I think the only thing that comes close to that is that he is inspired by Michel and I think that was you know that desire to reflect Michel in the books and and all that I admire about him but there are many many many women I admire who I could have put in so maybe the next series to be honest with you before I started writing the books when I was first designing them I actually thought the main characters would be Clara and Peter yeah and that the it would be a sort of an update a reimagining of the Nick and Nora Charles because I love that the dashiell hammett books but once Gamache appeared it was just so clear that that's who had to take over the series so it's an interesting and I haven't had any I am so fortunate I am so happy about that it would it would I oh it would break my heart if my francophone neighbors resented what I was writing about and in fact I get kind of the opposite even though there's some joking about them but there's a lot of joking especially from Gyeonggi about the Anglophones Inn in Quebec so I think we get it from from both sides I'm just a little worried once if anyone in the city ever starts reading the books I'm now very careful to go the speed limit yes all right you're wonderful well now I feel bad but I really accept that we heard uh myrtles tell us that he spends two years outlining his books before he ever starts writing we heard Celeste Eng tell us that she starts writing and characters appear suddenly that she didn't even know we're gonna be in the book could you describe more about how you developed the stories in your writing right at the beginning particularly was still life and probably for the first three or four I did a lot of outlining because I realized part of the writer's block was that I did sit down at a blank screen and think and nothing happened that I I hadn't given it really enough thought about what I wanted to write and why and plot characters and development so I did a lot of and I and I probably had to I think it was probably it wasn't a crunch I think it was actually a tool as I've gotten more confident and gotten to know the characters more I do less of that though I do spend a year walking around before I start with a book a book with a notebook and it's split into different sections there's characters there's quotes there's plot atmosphere there's sort of miscellaneous writing down notes it becomes a little bit like a pointillist painting in that it's just you know disparate sometimes dots appear sometimes it's words sometimes it's a bit of poetry and over the course of the year something comes together so that I had I know then what it is I want to write about the themes where I want but generally I know now a few books ahead where I want the characters the main characters to be going but it's for me it's always true it's a struggle and it's one I I'm not sure I always get right before I start a book or even in the process that balance of having a good enough sense of where the book is going the plots and the themes the books aren't as we've said over and over about murder murder is an act it's not a theme it would not interest me at all to spend an entire year thinking about murder I don't think about murder I think about life I think about the consequences and the themes but as a result it has to be something interesting enough for me to spend that's all I do in a whole year I don't write short stories I don't I don't write another series I don't write essays I write a book every day I get every day I don't take a day off every day I get up and I write the book so it has to be something that I find compelling so over the course of the years I approach the first day of writing I'm I'm just picking up these bits and pieces I would say probably 60% of which is not going to be used in that book maybe in future books but then I know when it comes together that I've reached that stage where now I'm dying to write because I know enough of what I want to say what where the characters are gonna go what the themes what the plot is going to be but like a playlist there has to be space in between the dots there has to be I can't hold on to it too tightly because then there would be no space for inspiration for the unexpected so it's that's that balance the struggle that I that I have between structure and and space for inspiration I'm trying to figure out how to keep this simple and here it comes I've loved you from the beginning it's that simple thank you I sent you an email within two hours I got an email back from you oh then now I hear from Lees but I'm very the point is the point is I wrote these is another fiction I've just created her she doesn't exist no I wrote to you because I was so impressed with your humanity I'm a therapist and I said as a therapist I am so conscious of how you love your people and in my life and in my work it is about friendship is about helping people connect it is about love and that's what I saw in your writing from day one thank you [Applause] thank you I often think one of the great gifts that I've been given in my life is that sort of the more I'm going to use a profanities to someone who doesn't want to hear it cover your ears the more up you are the better writer you are if you can if you can come through the other side because what it teaches you of course is compassion and connection with others and and that that quote that the young agent said to Gamache that he carries with him that we are strongest where were broken I believe that yes hi so I also love everything about your books one thing I wanted to ask was I love getting to learn about things like quintuplets and the 8th news and cartography and I was wondering where are those devices come from if you keep a file of things that interest you if how deeply you research those topics before you incorporate them that's the interesting questions sometimes they're a bit of a surprise to me I am Not sure that cartography was going to play as a bigger role in how the light gets in as it ended up playing and the same with the the champagne was always going to be you know that was always going to be in in bury your dead the the centerpiece of the thing but some of the other the issues of the Battle of the plains of Abraham and what happened between wolf and Montcalm that that was a bit of a surprise as well the trick is the telling detail it's it's to know what to keep in and what to take out because there is a tendency if you know it and you spent a long time researching it and it is now a tax deduction that really it should be in the book because someone might ask about it at some stage why did you go to Holland but to not put too much in so yeah I'm I was never good in school I got straight C's I was 60s and Otton at no stage that any teacher ever say to my mother do you know if Louise only worked harder she would be better I am sorry mrs. penny but your daughter is working flat-out thank God your two sons are smart so I you know it interests me we're talking about it over drinks this afternoon before coming here that talk about my editors young son who's 16 and I was thinking you know at 13 14 15 6 nobody would have ever predicted that I'd be up here there's a great quote from the wife of one of our prime ministers mrs. Pearson who famously said that behind every successful man there stands a surprised woman [Applause] I don't think I think behind me there's like this whole mob of surprised people I think over here from when Louise to another you're going a heck of a job Thank You Louise I wanted you to talk a little bit about your use of First Nations that there's that that being the thing that has driven Gamache out and back and I was just very interested in why that seems to roll through each one of your books what not all of them but many of them you're absolutely right the First Nations the Aboriginal community as a journalist I covered a lot of that in Quebec there was a they flooded a lot of the First Nations land up in James Bay in order to power the white community south and it it was devastating to the Native community and recovered it and then the Native community started having blockades and holding people at rifle point and the government is going now where did this come from what do you mean you did steal their children you put them in residential schools you beat the language out of them then you then you take what what little land you've actually given them in the middle of nowhere and you flood it and you're surprised so I think you know that's sort of atrocity I think has hurt me and and because I happen to have given birth to our mom it hurts him to that one scene in I believe it was in barrier dead where he's he meets a native elder who's come down from the Cree territories and she's protesting in front of a hotel thinking that it was the national assembly that actually happened and I covered that went and spoke to the woman but you know I'm sorry but who are you why are you protesting the chateau frontenac and she barely spoke English and her community had gone banded together for like six months to try to raise the money to send this one person down to go back to protest and she was so much a fish out of water she was protesting in front of a hotel and we put her on the air and and and tried to tried to get her butt but it was because the young men and women were disappearing up north and nobody cared so that sort of thing needs to to be brought into the open and you know people think Canada is a wonderful wonderful place but I think every country has something to be ashamed of and that is something that we need to own more so thank you hi I just want to say that I really appreciate your sense of humor and I love the way it comes out in the dialogue in the books and the characters and the characters just come across as very real and you know I often wonder what it is about me that attracts me to murder mystery something wrong with me so to hear you say that it's not the murder for me it's kind of the whodunit and why also but I think you talk a lot more about friendship and love it's it's often deep philosophical issues that make you think and I really wanted to ask you about Jen guy and why you had him go a certain direction but you don't want us to get into thank you so I was just done you can see I was about to yes but since you since you said that kibosh is based on Michael are you read Marie or are you or are you a composite of some of the other characters because everybody says you know you write based on your life experience yes no I wish I could say I've you know to be honest I am partly for sure their relationship is is very much the type of relationship Michael and I had so that's how I can write about that I made Rennes Marie a librarian because I have such respect for librarians and but I think I started off actually as Clara yeah that's sort of insecurity at times but also with enough determination to to do what I needed to do in my own way but then being pretty sure I got it wrong the four o'clock in the morning terrors I'm not quite as messy as Clara I barely have banana in my hair but it does sometimes happen so but I think I am a bit of everyone probably least I think Ruth but she and I do share a certain delusions so maybe I am yeah so I think you're right I think I am actually probably a lot of who they are it's it's quite a challenge writing our mall because it's it's something to write someone who is actually smarter than I am and a better person than I am I have to I wear a bracelet actually here and it says what would Gamache do we actually sell it and raise money for dementia research around the world but also it does help me be a better person I'm embarrassed to admit Thank You Louise could you share with us please your interest in dementia oh and where'd that comes from yes yes and I'm so pleased that that that we're raising money tonight are you involved in that organization at all no but my husband died of a neurodegenerative disease so sorry how long ago was that ten years ago oh gosh oh you must have been young and he must have been young too I'm so sorry that's painful that's one of the things I've learned Michael that young well that's one of the things I've learned in this because Michael wasn't young Michael was was 20 or so years older than me he was 82 when he died so has Peter it was that right so you married an older man as well no we should sit down but what a blessing actually that yeah you know it's a terrible thing obviously to have someone you love diagnosed with with dementia Michael was at a doctor the head of hematology at the Montreal Children's he was a lead investigator into childhood leukemia around the world he would come into the States and he would run trials wrote papers he would tell me that when he started treating children with leukemia 80% of them would die by the time he was finished 80% survived which not simply because of his research but he certainly contributed to it he is an extraordinary man with a great great mind but he was eventually diagnosed and Chris looking back on it you think oh I should have seen the signs I should have seen when he couldn't count that you know he had difficulty with that bill or but you know you just think oh well that's that's just natural we all have difficulty sometimes I've since learned that when they cuz they do this task this psychosocial test to try to figure out you know or how where are you on the scale well Michael tested absolutely normal but what they didn't realize is he actually started pretty high he dropped to normal which is you know I know if I ever get dementia it's gonna be like so that's that's that's my interest I we were within the realm of it being awful we were about as lucky as you could get because well first of all it wasn't early onset so he was he was already in his late seventies so while it was a personal tragedy it wasn't tragic overall he became just he was always a gentle soul he just became gentler and happier and kinder to smile all day long and I was younger I worked from home we had the financial resources for the support and we lived in a small community where everybody helped they came over they if Michael fell like that all sorts of people who could come over and help me get him back up we had every advantage and it still shattered me I don't know how people do it I don't know how most of people who have get dementia have partners who were either have no partners who have partners who are the same age it is such a thief dementia which is why it's so important for me to to try to not only wait raise awareness when Michael was diagnosed he made it clear that first of all he wasn't ashamed of it he wasn't embarrassed about it he wanted to talk about it because it was going to be clear but also he wanted me to talk about it as well because because he didn't want to be treated like the mad the mad uncle in the Attic so that's why it's important for me to go out to raise money and raise money for caregivers as well for respite care because if the caregiver goes down nobody nothing good happens so that's my interest thank you thank you [Applause] hello I'm so happy to be here I'm so happy you're here a year ago when you did your last book tour I sent a an email and I said why are you not coming anywhere near DC or Baltimore and so I think it's personally mine I am I love your characters I find them to be so well drawn and so human and like probably most the people in this audience I have a secret love affair with Gamache but the one character who breaks my heart in every one of your books is Ruth uh she's I don't know I just wanted to know why Ruth yeah why Ruth Ruth Ruth was when I created the characters and again I didn't think the books would be published but when I created the characters I realized I had a slight problem because I did want the books to be published I'd read enough books to realize that my problem was that everybody was fairly well balanced and quite nice but that we needed a counterpoint we needed a kind of a Greek chorus in the village and so I looked around to our our acquaintances there two of them Ruth is inspired by two people that think they of course don't see it they all think that they read Marie or Clara like I was it I was at a party not all that long ago and one of the roots was there and someone with a very low survival instinct wait after her to say [Applause] absolutely while denying it proving the point so that's where Ruth that's how Ruth started but but I always knew that I wanted her to also be a poet because we all have a saving grace and Ruth's saving grace among several of them is is a self-awareness she is aware she's simply born inside out you know the books are again they're about one of the things they're about is the duality the duality that the gap between what we are thinking in what we say between the public face and our and our inner emotions between the beautiful village and what's happening behind closed doors and most of us fortunately have the public visit we have the facade we're taught early how to do that and then thank God we do so we keep our more rancid thoughts inside whereas Ruth is the opposite she has all of her rancid thoughts outside her she keeps her goodness hidden partly and this was the story I won't go into it too long but now Rosa came to be born because Ruth has become convinced through her life that line who hurt you once so far beyond repair that if that everything she loves and cares about she ends up hurting and that was proven with with roses sister so that's that's where Ruth comes from let's take this takes just these two and then then is that oh no and then you yes [Laughter] I'm seeing the film of still life I'm really thrilled with the choices made my friends and I argue constantly over who would be the best actor to play Grenache my choice is Trevor Eve who was in the TV the BBC TV series waking dead do you have a choice that you would like to see play Gamache well most of them are dead now or have to appear in the ashtrays Trevor's still alive Trevor they see how old is he you see that's part of the issue is that many of the actors who I think would be greater now sort of into their 60s and the thing is if you're gonna have a series you mean you wanted to be age appropriate but you also wanted to be able to you know go on for 10 years so I but I'll look him up Trevor Eve Eve's good I initially thought this is you probably don't even know who this guy is Ciaran Hinds does anyone know is that right you thought yeah but now he's in the 60s as well so anyway these filmmakers I that I was also disappointed with what happened with the film so I'm now it's my own fault because I'm saying no to everything at this stage so it would have to be an extraordinary offer from a really fine company for me to say yes yes a question about Ruth and her poetry is it seems like after this many books you might have a little tiny book of just roots poetry because my sisters and I come Wow we could collect it up and have a booth booked well do you know I don't write her poetry it's not mine if you look at the front of every book there's acknowledgments and sums from a self-published book by a poet who unfortunately passed away before the book was put out it was put out by a friend of hers and he knew how much I loved poetry so he gave me this was before I was writing this slim volume of her works Maryland lesnar is her name and I was so taken with that's where the line who hurt you once so far beyond repair comes from but most of her other poetry is market out would yeah yeah it's a wonderful poet it's all from a book of her is called mourning in the burned house pretty grim you know and you wonder why poetry isn't more popular morning and the burned house but the poetry inside is glorious it's wonderful it's all done of course with with her permission because you don't want to piss off margaret outlet last question I um I was thinking about this earlier when you were talking about you know moving to the plates that you base three Pines off of I'm also a big Thomas Wolfe fan and thinking about it can't go home again things like that I was just wondering how you kind of gained the courage to write about your own experiences knowing that those also involves so many other people kind of like good in the bad and how you kind of make those decisions and how you gain that confidence no I don't think I can talk about that because I fictionalize it I honestly don't worry about taking bits and pieces of my experience and other people's experience because for the most part is fairly universal I have never taken anything negative about about someone else most of what I do write about is is fictional so it was really the big thing I had to overcome was was the fear of what my neighbors would think of the book itself some of them some see themselves in it most are happy some aren't but you know I know in my heart that there was nothing that was done maliciously and I know that for sure so so it did didn't take much courage on my part I'm again it's probably delusion thank you for your question thank you all and celebrating [Applause] crazy [Applause]

Channel: Politics and Prose

Views: 16,055

Rating: 4.9815669 out of 5

Keywords: Louise Penny, Louise Penny A Better Man, A Better Man, A Better Man by Louise Penny, A Better Man book, Louise Penny author, Louise Penny books, Louise Penny interview, Louise Penny novels, mystery books, mystery writer, Inspector Gamache, Inspector Armand Gamache, Armand Gamache, Politics and Prose, Louise Penny Politics and Prose, armand gamache pronunuciation, inspector gamache series characters, inspector gamache series order, Louise Penny series in order

Id: mjdag9H1DM4

Length: 68min 1sec (4081 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 23 2019