‘Let it go. You have your own life. Not Uncle Saul’s, not your parents’.’ His face had grown very serious then, his eyes searching. ‘You can’t live in the past and you certainly can’t undo it. What happened to Uncle Saul has nothing to do with you. Memories can kill, Yvette. The past can reach right up and grab you and drag you to a place you shouldn’t be. Like a burning building.’ He’d looked out again at the hungry, licking flames, then back at her. He’d leaned forward then until their heads were almost touching. It was the most intimate moment she’d known. In a soft voice he’d whispered, ‘Bury your dead.’
Finished this last night!
I loved the continuation of a truly human cast of characters in this tiny village in Quebec. I did like Still Life slightly more than this second book in The Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series, but I found this book to be just as cozy and comforting as the first. The author did something very clever here that I enjoyed. She used the intense nature characteristics of a brutal Quebec winter as a sort of indicator of where characters were landing on the spectrum of their feelings and reactions. It started out with some harmless frost creeping up on the windows and ended with a full on rager of a storm. In the same way music grows louder and harder to ignore in suspense filled scenes in film, so did the story's narrative arc as the storm blew in. I haven't seen this particular contrast executed so well in a story before! It created a really cool element to an already unique plot.
4/5 Stars
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