Still Life by Louise Penny, December 2016

Fourteen members attended this month's book club with some good eats to share, meeting somewhere other than Park Grove Library.  The group had a good discussion on Still Life.

We introduce ourselves and shared what we thought about the book.  I was only there for this first part of the discussion so will share what people thought.  Several members said they will be reading her other books or already have.  It was a great choice many agreed.

Most liked it or loved it.  It was a good mystery, and one person said, I usually don't care for mysteries, but found this fascinating.  Most liked Inspector Armand Gamache.  A few people mentioned they liked the humor in the book, the little tidbits of life.  There was good character development.  One person said they image of Jane's house.

Three Pines, near Montreal was the setting and many loved that scene, the placement for the book.  One person said she would love to visit it, although it is fictional.  Another member said she lived in that area and it is as described.

Another member touched about the conflict in that area with franco or english language, not realizing it is such a division.  Someone who had lived in the area shared that the French were considered the lower class, the English above.  

I liked in the book, the character Myrna, who had been a psychologist in Montreal before getting to Three Pines.  She had a book shop and I liked when she shared her thought about change. She was talking about a book titled "Loss, by Brother Albert.  This is from page 139 in the paperback:  "Most of us are great with change, as long as it was our idea.  But change imposed from the outside can send some people into a tailspin.  I think Brother Albert hit it on the head.  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."  

I also liked that Ruth Zardo (fictitious character) was a poet quoted in the book, often  

"Who hurt you, once,

so far beyond repair

that you would greet each overtune

with curling lip?

When were these seeds of anger sown,

and on what ground 

that they should flourish so,

watered by tears of rage, or grief?

It was not always so."

Another poet was quoted, W. H. Auden, Herman Melville  This one was quoted in the book and helped to solve the mystery of who did kill Jane.  
Towards the end he sailed into an extraordinary mildness,
And anchored in his home and reached his wife
And rode within the harbour of her hand,

And went across each morning to an office
As though his occupation were another island.
Goodness existed: that was the new knowledge
His terror had to blow itself quite out

 Evil is unspectacular and always human,

and shares our bed and eats at our own table.