Author Louise Penny isn’t interested in those ‘annoying’ Goodreads reviews | Canada Voices

Like most of us, Louise Penny has recurring anxiety dreams. They’re the kind of nightmares that swirl up out of our scholastic subconscious – “I can’t get to the class, I’ve never been to the class and then I’m naked,” is her familiar version of this – or that echo professional terrors years after we’ve left a particular job.

“I still have journalistic dreams,” says Penny, who was a radio host and journalist at the CBC for nearly two decades before her first novel was published in her 40s. “I can’t get to the studio, I can’t turn the mic on, I haven’t done any of the research and I have to interview someone. And then I’m naked, of course.”

When it comes to fiction writing, however, Penny’s slumber is undisturbed. As it should be, perhaps, when you’re the author of an award-winning, internationally bestselling series that’s sold more than 18 million copies worldwide and been translated into 32 languages. (But having her publisher ring up and ask her when she’s going to turn in a book that she hasn’t even started? “That’s a waking dream,” she says with a laugh.)

In fact, as the 19th Inspector Gamache novel hits stores, Penny reflects that writing has gotten easier over the years. “For the first few books, I was trying to figure out how to write books,” she says. “How did that first book come about? I was terrified I couldn’t get that again, or do it on time. Everything was scary.”

Now she has a system, a way of structuring her day and setting daily targets that motivate someone goal-oriented like her.

“But the underlying fear is always the same,” she adds. “And that’s that I’m writing crap. I try to make each one different, and push the boundaries, but have I moved too far? Is it unbelievable? Is it silly? Is it melodramatic? You want people to be able to go along with it, and say, ‘This makes sense.’ ”

When you’re writing murder mysteries in a crowded genre – and for an audience that may be increasingly jaded by true crime – that line between clever twist and jumping the shark can be a fine one.

That worry, Penny adds, is a reflection of just how much she cares about this work, even nearly two dozen books – plus a thriller written with Hillary Rodham Clinton – in.

The Globe spoke with Penny, who lives in rural Quebec, about why she doesn’t read Goodreads, the fundamental decency of humanity and why novels are like symphonies.

Do you care about different things now at Book 19 than you did at Book 1?

With things like this, I can relax because I know that no individual conversation or event is going to make or break me. With the first few books, that wasn’t the case. It does matter if I get up and I give a talk at the [Toronto International Festival of Authors] and if it’s really bad and there are reviewers there, that could have a knock-on effect. If I have a bad review in The Globe, that could have a knock-on effect early on. Now, no one wants a bad review but I think my career will survive a couple of bad reviews. But the fear is still there that the reviews are right.

Now, it’s not just the newspaper reviews. It’s the Amazon reviews, the Goodreads reviews. Do you fear those?

I don’t read Goodreads. I find it annoying. I probably shouldn’t say that because they have a lot of power. I hate that Goodreads allows people to give a one-star review for a book they haven’t read that isn’t even out yet because they didn’t like the previous ones or they don’t like my name or they’re having a bad day so they’re going around giving one-star reviews or the book arrived damaged or something outside of my control. It would be like walking into a propeller every day – and I did, initially, and it’s very painful.

I bought a copy of your latest book, The Grey Wolf, over the weekend, and the cashier was saying, ‘My mom loves this author, we’re going to an event with her tonight.’ It was really sweet that they were sharing this together.

Do you share books with your mother?

We have very different tastes, but over the last winter we both fell in love with Elly Griffiths’s Ruth Galloway forensic anthropologist series. They’re delightful.

She’s fantastic!

I’d actually compare your books to her books because there’s something in their shared DNA, which is that they’re about death and crime and dreadful things but the overwhelming feeling you get when you read them is …

Decency! And that world has all those elements, but most people want to be kind and help each other. I was thinking about the terrible hurricanes and the flooding and the terrible damage and the deaths in North Carolina and the other areas in the path. It became obvious that no one asked, “How do you vote?” They just help each other. That’s the best of us, and that’s the reality. The rest is just noise and thunder.

In The Grey Wolf, you take on pretty much all the institutions. Like, let’s do the church, let’s do the government, let’s do the mafia while we’re at it. I thought you were hitting on this thing that’s happening now, which is a lack of trust in institutions – and how, as a reader, I had no issue suspending my disbelief that any and all of those institutions could be involved in whatever conspiracy.

Because they have been. It’s getting harder and harder for fiction writers to push the envelope and make up something fresh when the Supreme Court, the politicians, the watchdogs, the cops … who do you turn to? Who do you trust?

Is that something you smelled in the zeitgeist and thought you’d braid into the story you’re telling?

I’m not sure it was that conscious. It certainly was necessary to tell the story, that Gamache and his colleagues’ circle of trust shrank until it was almost too small to be workable. They couldn’t trust their own colleagues. But I think for anyone who’s paying attention, it’s not too hard to believe that lawyers and judges and people in positions of trust aren’t de facto trustworthy.

Was there any personal nervousness in taking on big institutions like that, even in fiction?

It plays a little bit more in the next book, but the mafia, a little bit. Organized crime, people who have an actual track record of hurting people … but then I have to shake myself and say, honestly, let’s get a grip! There’s no way they’re going to track down little old Louise Penny in Knowlton, Quebec.

The relationship between Gamache and his wife, Reine-Marie, has been this warm pillar that holds up these books. We don’t get a lot of portraits of happy marriages like this in any kind of fiction.

That is one thing that is done very consciously. Partly because it mirrors, to an extent, the relationship I had with Michael [Penny’s husband, who died in 2016]. Many of the relationships among my friends, they have loving, mutually supportive relationships. In private, I’m sure they have their disagreements, and Reine-Marie and Armand have had disagreements, but they’re never threatening to their relationship. Within the turmoil and the chaos of a book like this, which is different than the other books in that it’s more of a thriller, I want the islands of calm. Whether it’s the bistro or the friendships or the dinners or those moments with Armand and Reine-Marie, where you know that’s the firm hands on the tiller.

There’s no jeopardy there.

I think of the books as many things, but one is as a symphony that has those quiet moments, so when you get the 1812 overture, you pay attention. But it can’t be that all the way. It has to be ups and downs and “catch your breath, it’s okay” and then it rises again and you’re prepared.

Is that how you think about it when you’re structuring something in your head? Is it that conscious?

Not in the first draft, but certainly in the second or third draft when I’m looking at pacing and structure. I realize, “Oh, there’s been so much stress, people need to be able to catch their breath.” We need to have those moments of calm, or of laughter. In life, often in the middle of something stressful someone will say or do something to break the ice or it just happens and you have that moment.

One of the things I love about these books is that they’re funny.

And they’re meant to be, because people are funny. They notice things, they say funny things, something happens and they laugh. It’s just the way I write, and the way I see life.

This interview has been edited and condensed.