The Brutal Telling (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #5)

by Louise Penny

The woods smelled musky and rich and sweet.

This description evoked such a strong memory of my childhood playing in the woods in NH. I can smell the sweet ferns.

Gamache knew without doubt the Hermit had been on the Queen Charlotte Islands, almost certainly when he’d first arrived in Canada. And there he’d learned to carve, and learned to build log cabins. And there he’d found his first taste of peace, before having it disrupted by the protests. Like a first love, the place where peace is first found is never, ever forgotten.

“Oh, you know that quote too?” said Gilbert. “I had three chairs in my house: one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.”

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”

Being exposed, and being without. Both were approaching, both threatening. Gamache sipped his coffee and thought again about those totem poles in Ninstints, rotting, falling, fallen. But they still had a story to tell.

She rose up into the air and the jilted earth let out a sigh. She rose up past telephone poles and rooftops of houses where the earthbound hid. She rose up sleeker than the sparrows that swirled around her like a jubilant cyclone She rose up, past satellites and every cell phone down on earth rang at once. “Rosa,” whispered Myrna. “Ruth.”

it was vital to be aware of actions in the present. Because the present became the past, and the past grew. And got up, and followed you.