World of Curiosities

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’m often asked where I get my ideas from. It’s a very good question and one I always feel I should be able to answer. And yet, I struggle.

How can I not know?

I think it’s because there are many ways, some clearer than others. I walk around with a notebook, and for many months before writing a book I observe and listen, taking down turns of phrase, single words, quotes from poems or books, snippets of conversation, or clipped articles from magazines and news reports. I often liken it to a pointillist work of art. Putting a dot of an idea here, another there. Some large, some tiny. Some to do with characters: Armand and Reine-Marie, Jean-Guy, Clara or Myrna, etc. Some are plot points. Some practical, some silly, some intuitive, some nutty. Some destined to become major themes, many destined to be ignored or used in another book. Or used as unexpected inspiration in later drafts.

For A World of Curiosities, I could not tell you exactly where the idea began. Where the major theme of “forgiveness” emerged. I have the feeling it wasn’t really until near the end when I realized how often, unconsciously, the characters struggled with it.

How often I’ve struggled with the need to forgive. To let go.

I’ve loved exploring that theme in this book.

I can tell you exactly when the idea for the painting, The Paston Treasure, hit me. I was in London reading a feature in one of the newsmagazines where prominent people talked about their favorite work of art.

This particular personage said, “The Paston Treasure,” then proceeded to say why. It was a revelation. I’d never heard of it, but what a wealth of ideas for a writer! I knew then it was going to be my Trojan horse that would allow all sorts of clues, all sorts of ideas, themes, references to past books, to enter into the lives of the Three Pines characters.

I’m not sure when the idea came to look at the case that first brought Armand and Jean-Guy together. Until I started writing those scenes I actually had no idea what that case was.

From there it was natural to also consider Armand’s “origin” story. At least, how he came to be in the homicide department. Again, I did not really know how it happened, until I went for a long, long walk. And the idea came to me.

To be honest, it was troubling. To use a real, tragic event—the murders at the École Polytechnique—and fictionalize elements?

I was a young journalist working in Québec City that day. December 6, 1989. I remember going into work early the next morning. I hosted the current affairs program for CBC Radio and needed to try to get clear on what happened at the École Polytechnique before going on air. The reports were still garbled. The researchers did amazing work, and through the morning I interviewed police, students, teachers, politicians. Trying to make sense out of a senseless act.

Fourteen young engineering students murdered. All women.

To my shame I initially believed, and gave airtime to, the politicians (all men) who insisted that this was the work of one lunatic, and not an indictment of society. There was no need to look at institutionalized misogyny. To examine equal rights, or lack of them. To have stronger gun control.

This was sad, a tragedy, but the targeting and murders of fourteen women and the wounding of thirteen others held no greater lesson.

It took me several days to hear, beyond their shouts, the quieter, more insistent, more thoughtful, far-more-compelling arguments of the families of the victims and the survivors.

To believe them when they said that the act was made possible because of hundreds of factors over hundreds of years that diminish, marginalize, sexualize, stigmatize women. It was an act of misogyny, as were the angry denials of the politicians, journalists, and gun advocates.

Yes, even as a woman, a journalist, I was so used to the status quo, it took me far too long to believe what these families, these women, were saying.

The deaths of those young women changed Canadian society. It brought about much stricter gun legislation (though it could be tougher still) and forced a long, hard, often painful examination of equal rights. Of human rights.

In deciding to look at the mass shooting at the École Polytechnique, and the reverberations that have changed Canadian society, I faced another issue.

How to write about this event without turning a tragedy into entertainment?

Before I began, I contacted Nathalie Provost.

Nathalie is one of the survivors who became—along with others, including the remarkable Heidi Rathjen—a passionate, indefatigable proponent for tight gun control, as well as an advocate for human rights that extends beyond equal rights for women.

I asked Nathalie how she felt about me including her and what happened at the École Polytechnique in a Gamache novel. And by necessity, since Nathalie would become a character in the novel and meet Armand, fictionalize elements.

Fortunately, she reads and likes the books. That helped. We corresponded about boundaries, and I said I would send her the final draft. If there was anything she objected to, I would change it. If I got facts wrong, I would either change them, or make it clear here in the acknowledgments where I chose fiction.

The day came when I sent Nathalie the book. Have to admit, I was afraid.

It took a few weeks for her to get back, partly because the École Polytechnique was giving her an honorary doctorate for all her work. An honor well deserved, at a terrible price.

Nathalie was beyond gracious in her comments. She wanted me to make it clear that the first calls for gun control, the first insistence that this was not the random act of a lunatic but the natural and grotesque consequence of widespread and often subtle misogyny, came not from her but from the families, for the most part. Nathalie herself, along with other survivors, was far too traumatized at first to be able to collect her thoughts.

That came later. And when it did, it was seismic. Nathalie, Heidi, and others brooked no dissent. They were articulate, passionate, and unrelenting in their calls for gun control. For equal rights. For human rights. For Québec, for Canada, to take a long, hard, fearless look at itself. And change.

Nathalie also wanted to make it clear that, for her, one of the horrors was when the media blamed the young male students for leaving when the gunman told them to. I remember how those young men were pilloried. Hounded. As though there was anything they could have done. As though the journalists would have rushed an armed man. It was a public hanging of innocent young men.

Nathalie also pointed out that many students stayed behind, hid, and when the shooting stopped they were the first to rush forward to help the wounded and dying. And yet, they got no mention, no credit.

They are heroes.

She also wanted to say that while Canada has strict gun laws, they should be tighter. I agree. Not surprisingly, so does Armand.

And, while the story of the engineering rings in Canada is true, Nathalie said they are actually given out at a special ceremony later. But I decided, for plot reasons, to go with the fiction.

Thank you, Nathalie, for helping me with the book, for being so very gracious, and for so much more than my story. For saving hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives with your work with others on gun control.

If I have offended anyone in my use of the shootings at the École Polytechnique, especially the families of the murdered women and the survivors, I apologize. Profoundly and unreservedly.

On the issue of fact versus fiction, I want to point out that Anne Lamarque was a real person, tried as a witch, and accused of owning a grimoire, which she defended as a book on herbs and medicine. In real life she was acquitted and never banished.

Many, many others helped with this challenging book.

I want to thank my assistant, Lise Desrosiers, for always being there for and with me. She has not only made the writing life possible by lifting so much off my shoulders but she makes it huge fun!

Thanks to Linda in Scotland. To Shelagh Rogers. To Danny and Lucy at Brome Lake Books.

Kelley Ragland, my editor at Minotaur Books, along with Andy Martin, Sarah Melnyk, Paul Hochman, and the CEO of Macmillan, Don Weisberg. Thanks to Jo Dickinson and her team at Hodder in the UK; Louise Loiselle, head of Flammarion Québec; David Gernert, my agent; and all the great people at the Gernert Company, especially Rebecca and Will, who do foreign sales. Thank you, Jamie Broadhurst, and the fine folks at Raincoast Books.

Thank you Rocky and Steve, The Hovey Gang, Kirk and Walter, and all my friends and family, who are so generous in their support. What would any of this mean without you?

And I want to thank you, for not only reading the Gamache books but for embracing the characters, the village. Me. I feel it, and it means the world to me. You have given me the most amazing life.

I do want to say that Nathalie Provost is not the only real person in the book.

Inspector Linda Chernin is inspired by Michael and my close friend Linda Chernin Rosenblatt. Linda, I love you.

Agent Hardye Moel is based on my amazing friend, Hardye—you guessed it—Moel. One of the wisest, kindest, funniest, and bravest people, along with her husband, Don, that I know.

Hardye, being a therapist, also helped me with some of those issues in the book. Thank you, Hardye, my love.

Finally, I want to return to the question of where I get the ideas for the books. I mentioned being magpie-like in picking up thoughts, articles, quotes, etc. But there is something else.

I honestly don’t feel I can take full credit for the books. There is, finally, an element of magic, of inspiration that seems to come out of nowhere. I have my own theories about where it comes from. I wanted, at the end of this, the eighteenth novel, to make it clear that in writing the Gamache books there is more than meets the eye. And always has been.