The Long Way Home

The last we saw of Peter Morrow, in A Trick of the Light, his long-suffering wife Clara Morrow was insisting on a year-long trial separation. Clara, long used to living in the more famous Peter’s shadow as an artist, had finally discovered how he had been sabotaging her for years, too emotionally insecure to bear his wife’s beautiful paintings to eclipse his.

Now, after the harrowing events of The Beautiful Mystery and How the Light Gets In (can it only be a year?), Clara is awaiting Peter’s homecoming. Only it never happens. What has become of the charming, incredibly handsome if emotionally crippled abstract artist?

In this 10th Three Pines mystery, Armand Gamache has begun a well-deserved retirement in the beautiful but tiny show more village in Canada’s Eastern Townships, with his clever wife Reine-Marie at his side. But Gamache cannot ignore Clara’s pain and worry over Peter. So, aided by his longtime second-in-command and now son-in-law Jean-Guy Beauvoir and by another protégée, Isabelle Lacoste, now the new Chief Inspector of Homicide in the Sûreté du Québec, Gamache starts to painstakingly track what Peter Morrow has been up to for the last year. He finds that Morrow has crossed Europe — Paris, Florence, Venice; Dumphries, Scotland — before returning to Canada. But Peter’s trail vanished completely four months ago when he left Québec City after withdrawing $3,000. Where did he go? And why? Clara, Gamache, Jean-Guy, and Clara’s best friend, the psychiatrist-turned-bookstore owner Myrna Landers, collaborate in finding out.

The Long Way Home differs from the roller-coaster ride that was How the Light Gets In, its immediate predecessor, as much as can be; that The Long Way Home unfurls more slowly, but still no less mesmerizingly, is yet more evidence of Louise Penny’s gift as an author. However, toward the end, The Long Way Home packs as many twists and surprises as any of Penny’s novels. The harrowing ending will catch readers completely by surprise — especially considering the slower-paced narration that precedes the reversal. The ending packs quite a punch! Readers won’t be sorry to take The Long Way Home.

One last bit: Midway through the book, Penny includes an extended reference to a magical garden in Dumphries, Scotland: the Garden of Cosmic Speculation. As you can see here, the garden, which is only open one day a year for five hours, looks like an Alice-in-Wonderland vision — if the mushroom that young Alice nibbled had been a psilocybin one. Checkerboards alternate with double helixes worthy of DNA and an assortment of three-dimensional spirals. As with A Rule Against Murder, Penny has issued an invitation to another one-of-a-kind tourist spot to add to my bucket list. show less

I like the familiar way this story unfolded, despite the radical shift the characters' circumstances have taken since the last book. It was nice to read Gamache in pure puzzle-solving mode, with no sense of urgency or menace dogging his heels. There is a fair amount of healing going on as he and his family slough off the remnants of their trauma, but also a sense of peace. A selection of Three Pines characters venture into the wilds of Quebec in search of an errant member of their tribe, and encounter more esoteric things than rustic scenery and people, namely art and philosophy and meaning. I was feeling a bit fatigued with Penny's language in this volume-- it's seeming a bit tired or strained. Clipped. Sentences are short, staccato, show more almost as if Penny isn't interested in elaborating but is simply telling the story with a minimum of embellishment. Perhaps a touch of "long series syndrome"? It gave me pause, but this was still an engaging read. show less

“Canvases. Art. Deadly art.” (Ch 36)

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his wife, Reine-Marie, are happily retired in Three Pines. At least they were. Until Peter Morrow, who was due to return home to the village on the year anniversary of a trial separation from Clara, does not show. At her wits’ end, Clara enlists the help of Gamache. And so begins what will finally be the venerable inspector’s last investigation: and it’s an intriguing one. Peter’s movements over the past year include Paris, Venice, Dumfries (yes, an odd fit), Toronto, Quebec City, and finally rural Quebec: Baie-Saint-Paul, the dense Quebec woods, and the scenic shores of the Saint Lawrence River. And if this goose-chase weren’t trouble enough, Gamache show more and his faithful second and now son-in-law, Beauvoir, are led into the art world via two Quebecois college professors who share a suspect history: one celebrated by the establishment, and the other firmly rejected by same. And what on earth to make of Peter’s latest works? none of his signature structure, rigidity, sterility, but a wild abandoned mess of colour and texture – a dog’s breakfast.

The Long Way Home is a sound conclusion to Penny’s well-loved Three Pines series. I like that Gamache’s character has been allowed to age: the duress of a long police career and grave injury having taken their toll – so that he’s somewhat off his game here, but he’s real. And I love that he has retired in the idyllic village introduced to us so many novels ago.

"His face showed his age. It was worn with cares and concerns and worries. With pain. But the deepest crevices were made by laughter. Around his eyes and mouth. Mirth, etched deep.” (Ch 1) show less

Chief Inspector Gamache of the Surete du Quebec has retired with his wife, Reine-Marie, to the cozy village of Three Pines. Instead of being able to enjoy the quiet, however, he is asked by a friend, Clara Morrow, to help her find her husband, who had promised to come back after a year and was overdue.

I should just pre-order these books. Forget getting them out of the library, because it's not like I don't know I want them all on my own library shelves eventually. But no, I had to go and request the book and steal it from our shelves barely processed and take home to borrow. What can I say about the series that I haven't already, in trying to explain why I am so drawn to this story and these characters? Because despite the abundance of show more staccato fragments and an amazing amount of crime in one tiny village, I adore these books. These characters have become like real people to me, almost family, so I am carried along with emotions like a pendulum reading about their ups and downs and yelling to them (and the author) mentally when I don't like what's happening. This story, Clara's journey, was no different. I laughed, I cried, I read with bated breath, I stopped reading at points because I didn't want the story to end. I still feel somewhat battered and bruised, but of course I'd read it again in a heartbeat. show less

Gamache is now retired and living in Three Pines but when a close neighbor needs help he, of course, steps up. But who insists on accompanying him on his search / investigation, and his allowing it is both surprising from a professional perspective, and not surprising knowing Gamache's calm, even-tempered wisdom.

I don't believe I've read any mystery containing as much humanity, kindness, understanding, insight, open-mindedness, tolerance and intelligence. And I've read many, many mysteries.

So for me the true mystery is how does Penny do it again and again?

And oh yes, Penny adds in just the right amount of humor, (Ruth and Gabri) and many descriptions of Canada's breath-taking and dazzling shores, woods and natural wonders.

I show more sincerely wish everyone would read Penny's books, and hope doing so would not just entertain but would make us better people! show less

As The Long Way Home, by Louise Penny, begins it is just over a year since the artist Clara Morrow has asked her husband Peter, also an artist, to leave the family home because of his jealousy and active undermining of her work, but they make a promise to meet again in one year, to see where their relationship might be. When Peter doesn't show up as promised, Clara asks the retired Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, lately the head of the homicide division of the Quebec branch of the RCMP and now living happily with his wife Reine-Marie in Three Pines, to help her find him. Clara believes that Peter wouldn't have broken his promise unless something terrible had happened to him. But it seems Peter has just been flitting around the world, show more from one artistic nirvana to another, or maybe not - and maybe he's not gone entirely from Quebec after all in the end, even though he seems to have gone to the end of the world....Unlike much of the Gamache series, this one focuses on the world of art and artists, which have always been touchpoints in the series of course through Clara and others; but here Gamache is not in charge, but serving at the intuitions of another's Muse. And it works, as ever it works. Penny has a way of taking the reader into the hearts, minds and souls of her characters, a very rare gift indeed. I loved the book, kept trying to slow down reading it so as to prolong my immersion in its world while at the same time wanting to know what happens next right this minute dammit! And, yes, I cried (a lot) at the end. Highly recommended. show less

Happily retired in the village of Three Pines, Armand Gamache, former Chief Inspector of Homicide with the Sûreté du Québec, has found a peace he’d only imagined possible. On warm summer mornings he sits on a bench holding a small book, The Balm in Gilead, in his large hands. "There is a balm in Gilead," his neighbor Clara Morrow reads from the dust jacket, "to make the wounded whole."

While Gamache doesn’t talk about his wounds and his balm, Clara tells him about hers. Peter, her artist husband, has failed to come home. Failed to show up as promised on the first anniversary of their separation. She wants Gamache’s help to find him. Having finally found sanctuary, Gamache feels a near revulsion at the thought of leaving Three show more Pines. "There’s power enough in Heaven," he finishes the quote as he contemplates the quiet village, "to cure a sin-sick soul." And then he gets up. And joins her.

Together with his former second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, and Myrna Landers, they journey deeper and deeper into Québec. And deeper and deeper into the soul of Peter Morrow. A man so desperate to recapture his fame as an artist, he would sell that soul. And may have. The journey takes them further and further from Three Pines, to the very mouth of the great St. Lawrence river. To an area so desolate, so damned, the first mariners called it The land God gave to Cain. And there they discover the terrible damage done by a sin-sick soul. show less