A Fatal Grace

I cannot express how disappointed I feel. I discovered this series very recently after reading a glowing review in the NY Times Book Review of the recently released [b:All the Devils Are Here|49127539|All the Devils Are Here (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #16)|Louise Penny|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1582597966l/49127539.SY75.jpg|74580851] and was immediately so excited to dive into a cozy Quebecois mystery series! I love mysteries! I love Quebec! And there are 16 books! Couldn't wait to binge.

The first book was a decent mystery - a little long-winded and definitely plagued with some peak mid-2000s social blindspots, but the setting was beautifully rendered and I really enjoyed the feeling of being back in a deep Quebec winter. It also set up Inspector Gamache as this outsider within the system and hinted at an ongoing storyline involving him fighting police corruption. So despite some issues with the first book I thought I'd give the second book a shot.

Oh boy did this book fill me with rage. The contempt that the "good" characters in this book have for certain marginalised groups - homeless people, fat children, people with mental illness - really makes you wonder what definition the author has for "compassion". The characters in both these books can be broken into 3 groups: Good-seeming people with a hint of possible darkness who might be suspect but you wouldn't want them to be, vile people with no redeeming qualities, and absolute paragons of virtue completely above suspicion. There are two characters that fall into that last camp - Inspector Gamache and Clara Morrow. They are explicitly and repeatedly described as being compassionate, caring, kind, loving, having sunshine coming out of their ass, etc. etc. These books suffer in general from telling not showing and this is demonstrated most with how these characters are presented. We are literally told over and over that Clara and Gamache are so virtuous ("He'd known she was insightful, and courageous and compassionate.", "He was far too compassionate.", "Instead of seeing ghosts Clara saw good [...] only really remarkable people saw the good in others.", "He knew Clara Morrow to be kind and loving and tolerant.") but their actions show otherwise.

The worst example happens early in the book. Clara steps over a pile of clothing on the sidewalk to look at a Christmas display in a shop window and then she experiences something terrible. "The pile of clothing had thrown up, the vomit gently steaming on the crusted blanket wrapped round him. Or her. Clara didn't know, and didn't care. She was annoyed that she'd waited all year, all week, all day for this moment and some bum on the street had vomited all over it.". Wow. The moment so important she couldn't take one fucking second to acknowledge another person's humanity was looking at a department store window display. I assumed when reading this that there must be some lesson coming from this, that Clara's behaviour would be outed as callous and she'd learn to be a better person, but no it actually gets even worse. Clara goes to an event, annoyed that she still has "the stink of the wretched bum" (yes, an actual quote). She then feels bad though about stepping right over a human being. Not because the person was a human being but because "She had a sneaking, and secret, suspicion that if God ever came to earth He'd be a beggar". She literally worries that she'll "be screwed" if the person on the sidewalk turns out to be God. What the actual fuck how selfish can you get. So, she decides to bring the "bum" a sandwich and a coffee. Not out of kindness but to protect her own ass from hell. Wait, it gets worse. On the way out she overhears someone criticise her art. She's obviously very upset by this and falls to the ground crying. But she bravely pulls herself up and makes it outside to drop the food off next to the human being who is slumped in a puddle of their frozen vomit. As she bends down the "beggar" grabs her wrist with a filthy mitten, stares into her eyes and says... "I have always loved your art, Clara.".

Excuuuuuuuuuse me??? Clara goes on to believe she actually met God which means that God came down to earth specifically to encourage her to not give up on her art. How did this whole interaction end up being entirely about Clara and not about the actual human being freezing to death on the bare ground??? This story is repeated throughout the book and it is always about Clara and her art and her faith and people tell her how good of a person she is for giving a homeless person a fucking sandwich. Literally:

[Clara:]"Thank God for the vagrant"
[Gamache:]"What vagrant?"
[...]She couldn't admit she thought God was a bag lady. She'd embarrassed herself enough this night.
"Oh nothing. I gave her a coffee and felt better about myself. It seems to work like that, doesn't it?"
To kind and compassionate people, thought Gamache, but not to everyone.

Yes, only the truly kind and compassionate can pat themselves on the back for showing the bare minimum of decency.

Here's a nice little tally of the words used to describe people experiencing homelessness in this book:

"Bum": 5 times
"Beggar": 6 times
"Bag lady": 10 times
"Vagrant": 19 times
"Homeless": 5 times

That's an 8:1 ratio of using pejoratives. Niiiiiice.

The story also revolves around an overweight 14-year-old girl who is fat shamed by everyone. I'm too exhausted to get into all those examples but trust me they're pretty nasty. And these are the good guys acting like this! Imagine how bad the baddies are. Because they're pretty much one-dimensional demon people who deserve every bad thing that happens to them.

Some things in books written in the 00s I can overlook, like the tokenism of the gay characters in these two books. I didn't love that in the first book but I get that at the time that was seen as "representation". But this book just totally crossed the line. I can't understand how this could ever be seen as OK. And to make a bad book worse the mystery wasn't even fun. The clues were glaringly obvious and the police treated basic science facts about lightning like they were brilliant new revelations. Gamache has a breakthrough when his wife suggests that a word in all caps might be an acronym, which she only realised because she's a librarian. Only librarians know how acronyms work! Like the first book, this one also dragged quite a bit with a lot of repetition. I get it, everyone looks the same in winter because they're all wearing big coats and it's hard to look fashionable. The setting was still cozy and nostalgic for me but everything else ruined it.

On top of all that, and this is really my main criticism, the reader of the audiobooks kept pronouncing tuque as "toak". Come on. Why have a British voice actor read a book with all Canadian characters?