Louise Penny says we’re lucky she’s not the prime minister: 'We would all be at war by now' - Toronto Star

The Canadian publishing phenom on Carney's Trump pushback, the 'lost generation' and her relationship with Armand Gamache.

“Hope is a revolutionary act,” says Louise Penny, the subject of the Star’s new “CanCon” interview series.

Louise Penny is one of Canada’s most successful writers — she’s sold nearly 19.5 million books worldwide — and in recent years, she’s also been one of its most outspoken. She’s been a vocal critic of the Trump administration and refused to tour in the U.S. She’s also published some of the most political books of her career, including a linked pair of novels, “The Grey Wolf” and “The Black Wolf,” that saw Chief Inspector Armand Gamache working on a grander scale than ever before, and two co-written thrillers touching on global conspiracies, cyberwarfare, and artificial intelligence, among other of-the-moment topics. The first of those was written with none other than Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In her outstanding new book, “Miss Wolcott’s Ghost,” the 21st novel in her Gamache series, Penny changes gears, luxuriating in the comforts and community of Three Pines, the village at the heart of her bestselling mysteries. “It was lovely to spend time back in the bistro, to put my feet up,” she says. “But at the same time, they can’t just sit around having café au lait, as much as I would love to do that in my real life. It still has to be riveting. It has to move forward, but at a different kind of pace.”

The result is a deeply satisfying novel weaving together strands of historical inquiry with further exploration of the rich and nuanced characters treasured by readers around the world. Her vast audience agrees — upon its publication last month, it debuted atop bestseller lists across North America.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Penny reflects on her iconic series, her political advocacy and contemplates the possibility of a chatbot version of her beloved detective.

That was something that didn’t strike me until the fourth or fifth book. I realized that I can explore anything, anywhere, as long as it makes sense within the world. You know, I can’t suddenly have dragons. Well, I suppose I could. But that would be the last book I wrote!

Yeah, here’s the dragon. She jumped the dragon!

I don’t want to be twee about the whole thing, but I have such affection for these characters, and I hope it comes through in the books. These aren’t just constructs for marketing purposes. I didn’t use an AI that popped up saying what certain paradigms are. These characters are made up from people who I love and care about, and they have qualities that I admire, or I’m afraid of. And I just love being in their company.

The books are also an examination of courage. What is courage? Who’s to say? There are different types of courage. There is emotional courage. There’s physical courage. There’s intellectual courage. We’re living in a time where we need to be morally courageous. We need to be ethically courageous. We need to be intellectually courageous. We need to stand up and speak and take whatever hit comes. And it won’t be a physical hit — nobody’s going to shoot us. But we may end up losing our career, we may end up losing our home or business, because of what we speak up for.

We’re talking specifically about the Americans because I’m not going to the States anymore to tour. The fact is I toured the States for 19 years. I was everywhere, and happily so, and gratefully so, and I was rewarded for it. It was something that gave me pleasure, and it doesn’t give me pleasure to not do it anymore.

But frankly, when I get a pushback saying, how dare you? You know what? You can come to me this time. This is where I’m going to be. I’m going to be in Calgary, I’m going to be in Edmonton, I’m going to be in Victoria. Come to me. We’ll embrace, and I’ll thank you for it, but this is something I need to do for myself. I’m not going to go to the United States when the Trump regime is in place, because it’s morally reprehensible. And dangerous.

Me? No. No, they do not come to me and ask. I think we are all very lucky that I’m not prime minister, because if I were, I think we would be at war by now. I mean, honestly, I can be so reactive. I’m not necessarily the most diplomatic. I think I would have shut off the oil. I would have stopped the rare earth minerals. I would have just said, you know, screw it. You’ve crossed the line. You are not allowed to treat us like this.

As I said in, I think, “The Black Wolf,” things are changing. There was a time when the industrialized nations were the alpha nations. That’s not the case anymore, not so much. It is changing now. It’s the resource-rich nations that are. We used to be mocked in Canada for being the hewers of wood and the drawers of water. Well, here we are. Yeah, we’ve got water. We’ve got rare earth minerals. We’ve got forests.

I think they would have declared a war on me!

Or I would have certainly threatened it. But you can’t threaten and then not follow through, and I would have been willing to follow through. I’m serious, and I’m so glad that Carney pushed back.

I think in Canada — and this is why I would not be re-elected if I were prime minister — we have to accept there will be a lost generation, economically. We have to go down to zero and then rebuild, and when we rebuild, our children and our grandchildren will be in so much better a position. But there’s going to be that transition, which is going to be incredibly painful, and we as a nation have to be willing to pull together and make those sacrifices. That’s what I would tell people if I were prime minister. But then, I’m 68, and I live in a little village where we barter kumquats. I don’t have young children, I’m not the one who would really be suffering.

My goal is always to choose optimism. There might be sacrifice, there may be dark days — and there are, we all have them. But I really believe that hope is a revolutionary act. That’s the revolution. Choose that. It’s all about choices, and again, courage. And don’t let them eat our joy. Be happy, be joyful, be positive, be optimistic, be hopeful. Because if you’re not, we’re all lost.

I tend not to take criticism to heart. A lot of times I don’t read it because I don’t want to know — ignorance is bliss! But I also sort of feel like … this is the train. You’re welcome to join me. But you have to please trust that I know where I’m going. “The Grey Wolf” and “The Black Wolf,” they did well, but there was some pushback because they were quite political, and people just want to be happy. They had enough of that in real life, and I understand that. But those were books that had to be written, and I hope that people will trust me. For the health of the series, I can’t keep writing happy books set in Three Pines. The series would have been dead twelve books ago. I’m just going to keep doing what I do and hope that they trust me and enjoy the ride. Or forgive one book that they don’t like and read the next. I understand there are going to be books that people really, really like and books that they really, really don’t. It’s like a relationship. Your friends sometimes do s—-ty things. You think, I don’t like that person, and then they do something nice and you think, well, actually, I do!

Oh, I’m ready for the AI. Bring it on! The virtual relationships. I’ve had one for 20 years! I’m ahead of the curve!

“I love you. I love you, Louise. Would you like a croissant?”

Louise Penny with her beloved dogs.

This is book 21 in a series, but I actually think of it as one long book with 21 chapters. Part of the fun of that is that the things that happen have an impact going forward. There is a reverberation through the next books. A line from Auden — when he was writing about Yeats after Yeats died, Auden wrote that mad Ireland hurt him into poetry. Armand was hurt into being the person he is. We all reach that fork in the road, where you become embittered or you become compassionate. And it’s been interesting for me to go back and see how he became that person. What were the hurts and what were the loves that made him who he is? So it is like a friendship, where you get to sit down with someone who is almost 60 and talk to them about their history, and find out a little bit about who they are. And that’s been fun for me, finding out what made him who he is today.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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Jared Bland is a writer and editor who lives in Toronto and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He is a freelance contributor for the Star. Reach him via his website: occasionalrain.ca