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Louise Penny is the author of an award-winning, internationally bestselling series that has sold more than 18 million copies worldwide and has been translated into 32 languages.Mikael Theimer/Delivered
Like most of us, Louise Penny has recurring anxiety dreams. They are the kind of nightmares that swirl out of our scholastic subconscious – “I can’t get to class, I’ve never been to class and then I’m naked,” is her well-known version of this – or that reflect the professional horrors of years past. after we leave a particular job.
“I still have journalism dreams,” says Penny, who was a radio host and journalist at the CBC for almost 20 years before her first novel was published at 40. “I can’t get to the studio, I can’t turn on the microphone, I haven’t done any research and I have to interview someone. And then of course I’m naked.”
However, when it comes to writing fiction, Penny’s sleep is undisturbed. As perhaps it should be when you’re the author of an award-winning, internationally best-selling series that has sold more than 18 million copies worldwide and been translated into 32 languages. (But having her publisher call and ask her when she’s going to return a book she hasn’t even started yet? “That’s a waking dream,” she says, laughing.)
As Inspector Gamache’s nineteenth novel hits the shelves, Penny reflects that writing has become easier over the years. “The first few books I was trying to figure out how to write books,” she says. “How did that first book come about? I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to do that again, or do it in time. Everything was scary.”
Now she has a system, a way to structure her day and set daily goals that motivates a goal-oriented person like her.
“But the underlying fear is always the same,” she adds. ‘And that is that I write nonsense. I try to make them all different and push the boundaries, but have I gone too far? Is it unbelievable? Is it stupid? Is it melodramatic? You want people to be able to go along with that and say, ‘This makes sense.’ ”
When you’re writing murder mysteries in a crowded genre – and for an audience increasingly jaded by true crime – the line between clever twist and jumping the shark can be thin.
Those concerns, Penny adds, reflect how much she cares about this work, even writing nearly two dozen books—plus a thriller written with Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The Globe spoke to Penny, who lives in rural Quebec, about why she doesn’t read Goodreads, basic human decency and why novels are like symphonies.
Do you care about different things about Book 19 than you did about Book 1?
Things like this help me relax because I know that no individual conversation or event can make or break me. That wasn’t the case with the first few books. It does matter if I get up and give a talk at the (Toronto International Festival of Authors) and if it’s really bad and there are reviewers there, it can have a domino effect. If I have a bad review in the Globe, it can have a domino effect early on. Now no one wants a bad review, but I think my career will survive a few bad reviews. But there are still fears that the reviews are accurate.
It’s not just the newspaper reviews. It’s the Amazon reviews, the Goodreads reviews. Are you afraid of that?
I don’t read Goodreads. I find it annoying. I probably shouldn’t say that because they have a lot of power. I hate that Goodreads allows people to give a one star review for a book they haven’t read yet and isn’t even out yet because they didn’t like the last one or they don’t like my name or they have a book are having a bad day so they give one star reviews or the book arrived damaged or something out of my control. It would be like running into a propeller every day – and I did at first, and it’s very painful.
I bought a copy of your latest book, The gray wolf, over the weekend, and the cashier said, “My mom loves this author, we’re going to an event with her tonight.” It was very sweet that they shared this together.
Do you share books with your mother?
We have very different tastes, but last winter we both fell in love with Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway forensic anthropologists series. They are delicious.
She’s fantastic!
I would actually compare your books to her books, because there’s something in their shared DNA, which is that they’re about death and crime and terrible things, but the overwhelming feeling you get when you read them is…
Decency! And that world has all those elements, but most people want to be kind and help each other. I thought about the terrible hurricanes and the floods and the terrible damage and the deaths in North Carolina and the other areas along the way. It became clear that no one asked, “How do you vote?” They just help each other. That’s the best of us, and that’s the reality. The rest is just noise and thunder.
In The Gray Wolftakes over almost all settings. Like, let’s do the church, let’s do the government, let’s do the mafia, while we’re at it. I thought you were referring to what’s happening now, which is a lack of trust in institutions—and that as a reader I had no problem suspending my disbelief that all those institutions could be involved in any kind of conspiracy.
Because they have been. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for fiction writers to push the boundaries and come up with something new when the Supreme Court, the politicians, the watchdogs, the police… who to turn to? Who do you trust?
Is that something you sensed in the spirit of the times and thought it fit into the story you’re telling?
I’m not sure if it was that conscious. It was certainly necessary to tell the story that the circle of trust of Gamache and his colleagues shrank until it became almost too small to be workable. They couldn’t trust their own colleagues. But I don’t think it’s that hard for anyone paying attention to believe that lawyers, judges, and people in positions of trust are de facto not trustworthy.
Was there any personal nervousness about taking on such large institutions, even in fiction?
In the next book it plays a little more, but the mafia a little. Organized crime, people who have a real track record of hurting people… but then I have to shake myself and say, honestly, let’s get a grip! There’s no way they’re going to track down little old Louise Penny in Knowlton, Quebec.
The relationship between Gamache and his wife, Reine-Marie, has been the warm pillar on which these books rest. We don’t see many portrayals of these kinds of happy marriages in any fiction.
That is something that is done very consciously. Partly because it reflects to some extent the relationship I had with Michael (Penny’s husband, who died in 2016). Many of the relationships between my friends are loving, mutually supportive ones. I’m sure they have private disagreements, and Reine-Marie and Armand have had disagreements, but they are never a threat to their relationship. Within the turmoil and chaos of a book like this, which is different from the other books because it is more of a thriller, I want islands of peace. Whether it is the bistro or the friendships or the dinners or those moments with Armand and Reine-Marie, who you know are the steady hands at the helm.
There is no danger there.
I think of the books as many things, but one is like a symphony with those quiet moments, so if you get the 1812 overture, pay attention. But that can’t quite be the case. It has to be ups and downs and “catch your breath, it’s okay” and then it rises again and you are prepared.
Do you think that way when you structure something in your head? Is it that conscious?
Not in the first version, but certainly in the second or third version when I look at pace and structure. I realize, “Oh, there’s been so much stress, people need to catch their breath.” We need those moments of calm or laughter. In life, often in the middle of something stressful, someone will say or do something to break the ice, or it just happens and you have that moment.
One of the things I like about these books is that they are funny.
And that’s the intention, because people are funny. They notice things, they say funny things, something happens and they laugh. It’s just the way I write and the way I see life.
This interview has been edited and condensed.