Louise Penny shares 5 books that inspired her to write the Armand Gamache mystery series
The crime writer's popular mystery series is now a TV show called Three Pines
Louise Penny is a bestselling writer most known for her mystery series following Chief Inspector Armand Gamache.
The series is up to 18 books, including Still Life, Bury Your Dead, A Trick of the Light, Glass Houses and the latest in the series, The Madness of Crowds.
The mystery novel series has now been adapted into a TV series by Amazon Prime Video. The Canadian Amazon Original eight-episode series is called Three Pines. It premiered on Dec. 2, 2022.
The Chief Inspector Gamache series of books have sold more than four million copies worldwide. Penny won the 2020 Agatha Award for best contemporary novel for the 16th book, All the Devils Are Here.
Penny is a former CBC broadcaster and journalist. In 2013, she was named to the Order of Canada. More recently, she collaborated with American politician and former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton on the political thriller State of Terror, which was published in 2021.
Penny sat down with CBC Books to discuss five books that inspired her prolific writing career.
Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
"The first book that resonated and changed my life, even though I was eight years old when I read it, was Charlotte's Web.
"It's because I was such a fearful child. I came out of the womb afraid. Thankfully, I was never given reason to, but I was afraid of everything, and my cardinal fear was spiders. It was a phobia.
I understood then the healing power of storytelling. From then on, I had a dream that one day, I would write.
"I still remember [the first time I read it]. I'm sitting in my bedroom, where I always loved reading alone because I felt safe there, reading Charlotte's Web. It suddenly dawned on me that Charlotte was a spider and I loved Charlotte and I wanted nothing bad to happen to Charlotte. In that instant, it was magic.
"My main fear in life was lifted because of the book. I understood then the healing power of storytelling. From then on, I had a dream that one day, I would write."
WATCH | Louise Penny and Hillary Clinton wrote a thriller together:
Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat
"I must have been in my early teens, maybe mid-teens, reading it at school. Up until then, most of the books we'd read were by dead American or British men. I remember being shocked when the teacher must have said that Mowat is alive. It struck me then that it is possible to be Canadian, a writer and alive all at the same time. From then on, I thought, it's possible.
It struck me then that it is possible to be Canadian, a writer and alive all at the same time. From then on, I thought, it's possible.
"Right before my first book, Still Life, came out, my husband and I were on the train between Montreal and Toronto for the book launch. I went to the bathroom and I passed this tiny little man. It was Farley Mowat.
"I went up to him and thanked him for what he did for me, and I went back to my seat and wept. I don't think I could tell you very much about what Never Cry Wolf was actually about. It was the fact that he was a Canadian writer, still living. It made it clear that I could do it if he could."
WATCH | Louise Penny reflects on her writing career:
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende & One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
"[After reading Allende and Marquez], I read and read South American authors because of the magical realism and how they integrated it seamlessly into, not just their narratives, but into the world. There was no separation between this world and the world of imagination and magic.
"That informed my first book, Still Life, which became the template for all of them, including Three Pines. There's something about the darkness and wonder for me in magical realism, that kind of dark underbelly transitions to this kind of awe and magic.
They need to be read through the chest, through the heart first, and then up to the head.
"One Hundred Years of Solitude starts with an execution. But then, amazingly, he turns it around and you get a sense that hope shifts. Hope starts off as one thing and it never goes away unless you decide it's going to.
"It shifts from 'I hope that it's not terminal cancer' to 'Well, I hope that I can live a quality of life' and then, 'I hope that I can die in bed with my children holding my hand.'
"These books don't work so well on a literal, intellectual basis. Leave that at the door and bring your soul to these books. They need to be read through the chest, through the heart first, and then up to the head."
WATCH | Louise Penny and Alfred Molina discuss Three Pines TV show:
Collected Poems of W.H. Auden by W.H. Auden
"Years ago, my mother gave me the Collected Poems of W.H. Auden, and it was a big six-inch book. I'm thinking for God's sake, you've given me an assignment!
Poetry is about emotions; they synthesize down to a couplet what I can struggle in 500 pages to convey. It inspires me.
"It changed my life. Certainly it informs all my books, but the great poetry also informs your life. It gives you guideposts along the way. I try to memorize poems so that when I go for a walk, I can recite them to myself.
"One of them in particular is the poem he wrote to Melville where one of the opening lines is: goodness existed. That was the new knowledge. His terror had to blow itself quite out to let him see it.
"Poetry is about emotions; they synthesize down to a couplet what I can struggle in 500 pages to convey. It inspires me."
Louise Penny's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
