What does each relationship say about love? Are there any common elements shared by all?Ĩ. In The Cruelest Month, the relationships between Odile and Gilles, Hazel and Madeleine, and Clara and Peter, are very different.

Louise Penny is unusually sensitive to the difficulties of finding love and the struggle to champion it in a harsh world. As the plot proceeds, is it possible to guess or deduce the killer? If so, at what point, and on what grounds?ħ. And then boom, a freak snowstorm kills them all.”Ħ. And not just the spring bulbs, but the bulbs on the trees. They’re tricked into blooming, into coming out. Eliot's poem 'The Waste Land,' resonate with the story? What do you think of Peter’s interpretation of April’s cruelty: “All those spring flowers slaughtered. What do you think is the difference between magic and miracles?ĥ. Discuss these characters and their various reasons for avoiding the house and/or the ritual.Ĥ. Peter, Ruth and Olivier stay behind when the group heads to the Hadley house for the seance. And devoured him.” What do you think Peter’s “monster” is? How does it manifest itself throughout the story? What becomes of the monster in the end?ģ. Standing in front of this creation of hers the terrible monster had found him. It had stalked him and finally found him. That he’d hidden from as a child, that he’d run from and buried and denied. It reached forward and right into him.Tears came to his eyes as he was overcome by this wraith that had threatened all his life. Early in the story, when Peter is looking at Clara’s unfinished painting: “He suddenly felt something grab him. We’re told that Three Pines is “only ever found by people lost.” In what way are Peter and Clara, Ruth, Myrna, Gabri and Olivier, and even Gamache and his team of investigators, lost people?Ģ.

Penny the cruelest month