just a piece of rhythmical grumbling.” Despite the poet’s own downplaying of his work, a vast number of significant critics disagreed with him. The poem defines the prevailing desperation of the post-World War I generation as well as Eliot’s own tortured time.Įliot described his epic poem as, “the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life. Originally published in The Criterion in 1922, The Waste Land was conceived by Eliot during what has come to have been described as a nervous breakdown and was heavily influenced by many things, including the Grail Legend, the work of James Joyce, Homer, and Hermann Hesse.

Eliot’s The Waste Land-that has provided one of the most recognizable lines in modernist poetry. How serendipitous to offer this post up in the month of April when the novel itself is set and the month-by way of T.S.

( The Cruelest Month, page 248, Trade Paperback Edition)

How difficult it was for those who didn’t bloom when all about was new life and hope. Eliot and thought the poet had called April the cruelest month not because it killed flowers and buds on the trees, but because sometimes it didn’t. Was this a natural death, or was the victim somehow helped along?īrilliant, compassionate Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec is called to investigate, in a case that will force him to face his own ghosts as well as those of a seemingly idyllic town where relationships are far more dangerous than they seem.Gamache took the bread to the long pine table, set for dinner, then returned to the living room. When some villagers decide to celebrate Easter with a séance at the Old Hadley House, they are hoping to rid the town of its evil-until one of their party dies of fright. But not everything is meant to return to life. It's spring in the tiny, forgotten village buds are on the trees and the first flowers are struggling through the newly thawed earth. Welcome to Three Pines, where the cruelest month is about to deliver on its threat. 'Many mystery buffs have credited Louise Penny with the revival of the type of traditional murder mystery made famous by Agatha Christie. The Cruelest Month is the third book in Louise Penny's award winning Three Pines mystery series featuring the wise and beleaguered Inspector Armand Gamache. Read the series that inspired Three Pines on Prime Video.

The cruelest month book