The quotation is, of course, from Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem,” and it’s a pleasure to think about Cohen and Penny in tandem.
Penny uses How the Light Gets In, another phrase from this song, as the title for her ninth Gamache/Three Pines novel. But she cites the phrase far more frequently; I’m making note of mentions as I re-read the series, and I’ll try to come up with a comprehensive list.
In this book, Myrna is expecting a friend for a Christmas visit, and she never arrives. The friend has a complicated family history, having once been a member of a Dionne Quintuplet-like set of sisters who were yanked away from their rural Quebec family, to be reared in splendid isolation for the delectation of the crowds who paid to visit and view them. Much like zoo animals, but small girls.
Now an elderly woman, Constance Pineault has lived a private and even furtive life for decades. When she’s found murdered, interrupted while packing for her visit to Myrna and Three Pines (where she had found peace and community), the question of who would have a motive to kill her seems even more perplexing than usual.
But this is not the only “crack in everything”. How the Light Gets In opens with one of the most chilling scenes in any Penny novel, as municipal employee Audrey Villeneuve struggles to overcome her terror, driving through tunnels and across bridges that she fears are on the verge of collapse. While I initially read this as her individual anxiety, something much more systemic is motivating Audrey’s fear. And despite her best, her heroic efforts, she does not prevail in trying to achieve safety and security for the people of Montreal.
But back to my title. Why is the idea of a “crack in everything” so crucial that this line is repeated in multiple novels?
For one thing, it may be biographical. Penny has written very openly about her own struggles in life, and her discovery of joy–the experience of being “surprised by joy”–in her marriage and then with her mystery fiction.
So it’s part of the ethos of these novels that while life is debilitating and discouraging, moments of joy break through. We are granted that grace, at least.
I’m picturing kintsugi because there’s an exhibit on display at the local art gallery. I was more familiar with the concept of wabi-sabi, which seeks to find beauty in imperfection. But in kintsugi, broken pottery is repaired with a lacquer and then dusted with metals: gold, platinum, silver. The goal is to highlight, not hide, the crack in everything.
Penny’s novels are, like all crime novels, about breakage. Breakage in the societal fabric, when murders take place and go even briefly un-avenged. Breakage in the relationships of friends, family members, and colleagues in the wake of violent crimes.
But they’re also, very significantly, about the repair work that is required to restore relationships. Some of that takes place through apologies, or asking for help, or acknowledging that one is a human and imperfect self, always already broken and needy. These are not easy things, particularly for seasoned police officers, but Gamache makes them part of his credo. The idea of being FINE (Fucked-Up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Egotistical, incorporated into the title of one of poet Ruth Zardo’s books) is also a nod towards brokenness.
For me, although these are not books where most of the protagonists have strong religious convictions, there is a theological dimension to trying to repair a broken self . . . and a broken world. Tikkun olam.
For Penny’s characters, repair requires a form of humility and willingness to admit error that is unusual in the “detective” figure. Most notably, perhaps, Gamache makes mistakes. Not once or twice, but repeatedly. And then he has to fix them. One of the worst is when he helps investigate Olivier for a terrible murder, convinced by the evidence. But a novel or two later, he has second thoughts. Gabri’s unshakable faith in Olivier’s innocence persuades him, post-conviction, to take another look at the crime.
And when Olivier returns to Three Pines, Gamache is willing to do the work of repair in their relationship, to re-build a shattered trust.
Sometimes in crime novels, there’s an elision between solving the crime, achieving justice for the victim and society, and repairing the damage. But Louise Penny, perhaps more than any crime writer I can think of, insists that these are discrete stages. All necessary, but not all simultaneous.
So if the light gets through “the crack in everything”, it doesn’t mean the crack doesn’t still require additional attention, and that’s a crucial point.
The Landscape of Canadian Women's Crime Fiction 