Book Report: The Cruelest Month

8. Louise Penny, The Cruelest Month (2007) (4/7/19)

This is the third of Louise Penny's thirteen books featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache (my reports on the first two can be found here and here).  By now we've come to know some of the regulars, both in Gamache's small group of homicide investigators and among the populace of the idyllic village of Three Pines, Québec. We'd also been introduced, as I recall somewhat in passing, to a scandal that rocked the Sûreté, the police force of the province,  some time before in which Gamache was a key player. That scandal comes back to haunt the Chief Inspector in this volume (and apparently is not put completely to bed by the end, though it is soothed).

The main story involves a murder in a "haunted" house (that also plays a role in the earlier books), of a woman fairly new to the community but well loved (perhaps too well). The woman seems to have died of fright—and of poisoning by ephedra, a diet drug. Complicating factors arise. As do people from her past.

The plot itself isn't why I enjoy reading Louise Penny. It's more the characters, and the setting, and the relationships. And especially Gamache himself. The village of Three Pines seems to shelter or attract an outsized amount of jealousy, loneliness, and perfidy, in addition to heaps of bonhomie, creativity, and good humor. It's completely unbelievable, really—but who cares? It's enjoyable, and I always end up learning something, usually of an emotional or psychological nature, often dished up by the bookstore owner Myrna.

Like the notion of the "near enemy": "It's a psychological concept," Myrna explains. "Two emotions that look the same but are actually opposites. The one parades as the other, is mistaken for the other, but one is healthy and the other's sick, twisted." Gamache asks for an example.

"There are three couplings," said Myrna. . . . "Attachment masquerading as Love, Pity as Compassion, and Indifference as Equanimity. . . . Pity and compassion are the easiest to understand. Compassion involves empathy. You see the stricken person as an equal. Pity doesn't. If you pity someone you feel superior."
 "But it's hard to tell one from the other," Gamache nodded.
 "Exactly. Even for the person feeling it. Almost everyone would claim to be full of compassion. It's one of the noble emotions. But really, it's pity they feel."
 "So pity is the near enemy of compassion," said Gamache slowly, mulling it over.
 "That's right. It looks like compassion, acts like compassion, but it is actually the opposite of it. And as long as it's in place there's not room for compassion. It destroys, squeezes out, the nobler emotion."
 "Because we fool ourselves into believing we're feeling one, when we're actually feeling the other."
 "Fool ourselves, and fool others," said Myrna.
 "And love and attachment?" asked Gamache.
 "Mothers and children are classic examples. Some mothers see their job as preparing their kids to live in the big old world. To be independent, to marry and have children of their own. To live wherever they choose and do what makes them happy. That's love. Others, and we all see them, cling to their children. Move to the same city, the same neighborhood. Live through them. Stifle them. Manipulate, use guilt-trips, cripple them."
 "Cripple them? How?"
 "By not teaching them to be independent."
 "But it's not just mothers and children," said Gamache.
 "No. It's friendships, marriages. Any intimate relationship. Love wants the best for others. Attachment takes hostages." . . .
 "And the last?" He leaned forward again. "What was it?"
 "Equanimity and indifference. I think that's the worst of the near enemies, the most corrosive. Equanimity is balance. When something overwhelming happens in our lives we feel it strongly but we also have an ability to overcome it. You must have seen it. People who somehow survive the loss of a child or a spouse. As a psychologist I saw it all the time. Unbelievable grief and sorrow. But deep down inside people find a core. That's called equanimity. An ability to accept things and move on."
 Gamache nodded. He'd been deeply affected by families who'd risen above the murder of a loved one. Some had even been able to forgive.
 "How's that like indifference?" he asked, not seeing the connection.
 "Think about it. All those stoic people. Stiff upper life. Calm in the face of tragedy. And some really are that brave. But some," she lowered her voice even more, "are psychotic. They just don't feel pain. And you know why?"
 Gamache was silent. Beside him the storm threw itself against the leaded glass as though desperate to interrupt their conversation. Hail hammered the glass and snow plastered itself there, blotting out the village beyond until it felt as though he and Myrna were in a world all their own.
 "They don't care about others. They don't feel like the rest of us. They're like the Invisible Man, wrapped in the trappings of humanity, but beneath there's emptiness."
 Gamache felt his own skin grow cold and he knew goose bumps had sprung up on his arms under his jacket.
 "The problem is telling one from another," Myrna whispered.
. . . "People with equanimity are unbelievably brave. They absorb the pain, feel it fully, and let it go. And you know what?"
 "What?" Gamache whispered.
 "They look exactly like people who don't care at all, who are indifferent. Cool, calm, and collected. We revere it. But who's brave, and who's the near enemy?"