Still Life

Great story spoiled by the narrator

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

This is the first in a wonderful series of books which I would recommend wholeheartedly to anyone. The village of Three Pines is a character in itself, the villagers who live there are 3 dimensional, engaging and flawed - being believably human. Despite the village setting, however, this is not a 'cosy' crime series. It is much darker and more profound than that.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Obviously Gamache, so fascinating! Ruth Zardo is also compelling. What I love about the characters is their wholeness - no-one is completely good or nice, no-one is completely awful or spiteful. Penny's characters are fully grown, complex adults and during the course of the series one becomes very attached to them.

What didn’t you like about Adam Sims’s performance?

Sadly, Adam Sims does not appear to have read the books before narrating them and therefore has no understanding of the characters. He makes the most basic mistake in giving Inspector Gamache a French accent for the first couple of chapters, then as he reads another character describing Gamache's British accent he changes it accordingly. This only lasts for a couple of chapters, however, before he's back to a French accent again. Most disappointing. His lack of knowledge of the characters really spoils things for me, rather than portray any complexity he makes most of them sound merely bad tempered.

Did Still Life inspire you to do anything?

I was inspired to read the rest of the series!

Any additional comments?

For £15 I expect a professional recording wherein mistakes are rectified rather than just ignored. When the book clearly describes the main character's British accent and the reader has given him a French accent surely someone in the recording studio could say "Oops, better do the first two chapters again."?

13 of 14 people found this review helpful

Enjoyable

Would you listen to Still Life again? Why?

Yes. I like the setting, characters & philosophical musings.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

The investigator in this series isn't a troubled man. He loves his wife and his colleagues and doesn't have too many issues with authority. Canada is beautifully evoked through landscape & characters. These are gentle, thoughtful books.

6 of 6 people found this review helpful

Keep with it - it's worth it!

I had to start this book 3 times as at first I just couldn't get into it. On one final try before I asked for a refund I understood the good reviews that I'd read. The characters really do have character, the story had enough twists and turns to keep me interested a and the narrator was really good. Will now be moving on to the second bookin the series.

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

Delightful

A sneaky peek into the life of French Canadians and the English who live in Québec. A who dunnit with a difference, a Chief Inspector with a difference and an insight into people that was surprising and welcome. I look forward to listening to the series as read by Adam Sims , who is a talented voice actor.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Brigadoon with Dead Bodies

Any additional comments?

Perhaps the best way to indicate what I thought of this book is to say that immediately after I finished it, I ordered the next book in the series.In some ways it's old fashioned: set in an Elysian village, the contemporary Canadian equivalent of St Mary Mead, so beloved of Miss Marple fans. When we were children, perhaps we yearned for ponies, or to be prima ballerinas or cowboys or astronauts: as adults, we long to live in villages like Three Pines, where bistro owners leap from their beds at dawn to dart from their kitchens and proffer freshly-baked croissants and flasks of cafe au lait; where there are archery clubs, and where famous artists and poets live; where people recite Auden at the dinner table and no-one thinks it odd; where you have to google a word before you realize that someone was swearing. The mist clears every hundred years or so, and there is Three Pines.In other respects, it's most definitely of our era. In its analysis of what moves people to act as they do in particular, it reflects contemporary psychology. Why do teenagers sometimes act like cave trolls, brutalizing the people who treat them most kindly and with the most tolerance? Why do some people gracefully accept the most appalling affronts whilst others seem unable to forgive the smallest rebuff? Even the use of the word "girl" as opposed to "woman" was subjected at one point to a surprisingly subtle analysis, which I'm still a little unsure about. Not many crime thrillers have the ability to drop passages into your head and leave them there to hatch/fester.Most importantly, it's a good yarn. After you've been led up plausible dead ends a couple of times, you realize that the author is an expert in laying a false trail and you settle back to enjoy the story.As other reviewers have commented, the narrator switches accents for the main character with hilarious results. At some points he is as English as Lord Peter Wimsey: at others, though I'm not entirely sure how a French Canadian accent differs from a French accent, he can definitely no longer be pictured in tweeds striding across a grouse moor. Once I had got used to this odd phenomenon, it became truly funny, and I found myself laughing out loud every time it happened. At first though, I was baffled, wondering if a) there were two different policemen or b) the one police officer adopted different accents according to whom he was with. A lot of us do that, don't we?

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Good story

I really enjoyed this book. The story is fun, the characters are quirky and the Inspector kind of reminded me of a Canadian Poirot. The narrator did a fantastic job and really bought the story and characters alive. Worth a listen.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Gamache has potential, but a narrator with more to offer would improve things.

A good story which doesn't overvalue it's central detective figure, but at the same time doesn't quite make the best of him either. Gamache runs a team, he isn't a Sherlock Holmes figure. An apprentice-type falls out with Gamache, again showing him as not perfect as well as patient. He has potential for Penny to develop (whether she has or nay, I don't know as I've not read/heard any).
Sadly, I'm not sure that I like Adam Sims's voice; you might. To me he sounds a bit strangulated, tending to make some characters sound rather tetchy or bad-natured. I can say that I did get used to his tones and was able to get past actually disliking them.
If this was Penny's first novel or her first with these detectives, then she managed quite well; if she is already established in other ways then she should have done better, I feel. The story itself has good characters amongst the suspects/townsfolk, who were perhaps more rounded than the investigators. I'd listen to another of her novels to see what she has done with the detectives, but I'd be hoping that someone other than Adam Sims reads it, to suit my tastes.

3 of 4 people found this review helpful

endured this; not bad in the end

Would you ever listen to anything by Louise Penny again?

Probably not. I almost gave up after the first couple of chapters but was sufficiently interested in the whodunit to persevere. The main police characters were reasonably engaging but the "suspects" were pretty much entirely annoying and unsympathetic. And there were a number of loose ends (e.g. the junior police officer) that weren't answered. Unfortunately I don't care enough to read the second book.

Would you be willing to try another one of Adam Sims’s performances?

The performance here was really irritating. Every sentence was read with huge amounts of drama... "And then he poured himself a cup of tea!!!!".

5 of 9 people found this review helpful

Still life very much alive

Louise Penny has the sort of writing talent you can only dream about. I had not heard of her until a relative recommended her and glad I was to discover a whole string of books just waiting like a pack of your favourite doughnuts to be digested one by one! She is just the sort of detective writer I love the most, more concerned with character and setting than plot, but the plot is still there and the wrongdoer to be unmasked at the end. She describes a small town community in French-speaking Quebec with loving and masterly detail, until you know them intimately. And Inspector Gamache has all the qualities of a modern Hercule Poirot - far more reflective, observant and deductive than those obsessed with forensic detail. It is, after all, people who commit crimes, not blood stains or carpet hairs! If you want an excellent novel with a mystery thrown in, this is for you.

I had not heard Adam Sims before either and he does a great job of the reading, fluently passing from the French to the Canadian English and back again with hardly a pause for breath. Highly recommended.

Very addictive - every book

Louise Penny is a truly gifted author with a far reaching imagination, never more evident than in the Armand Gamache series. We learn so much about each character, we too, develop relationships with each of them. This is natural as Louise shows us more about each character, both flaws and strengths, and let's face it, who wants perfect people?! Even in the hero Armand Gamache, we see both, this allows us to really get to know everyone, some come and go - many return, worth several reads, I thoroughly enjoyed each one