Hanna's Cookies & Second Impressions

by Amy

“[Hanna] placed a cup of tea in front of Agent Lacoste. A white plate piled with cookies was also put on the spotless table.

Lacoste thanked her and took one. It was soft and warm and tasted of raisin and oatmeal, with a hint of brown sugar and cinnamon. It tasted of home.”

I think I misread this scene the first time around. I didn’t pay attention to the word “oatmeal”. I got caught up in the brown sugar and cinnamon and the taste of home. Somehow, in my mind, I pictured my favorite homemade cookies:  Pumpkin Chocolate Chips. They smell and taste like home to me. So I seem to have read it like this:

Amy thanked her and took one. It was soft and warm and tasted of pumpkin and chocolate, with a hint of brown sugar and cinnamon. It tasted of home.

I think I literally tasted the pumpkin cookies when I was reading. I’d already baked, eaten, and pondered on what I was going to write in the post before I wrote out the quote and realized that I’d made the “wrong” ones! I do love oatmeal cookies, but I usually add chocolate chips as well as (or instead of) raisins. I even have my favorite oatmeal cookie recipe which is perfect because it’s one of those “pour everything into a bowl, mix, and bake for 10 minutes” recipes. Don’t you love those?

I hope you’ll forgive my creative license. Or should I call it absurdly deviated interpretation of the text?

I think these cookies are startling because of their contrast to Lacoste’s impression of sterile angularity. The house didn’t, at first glance, look like a home. Hanna Parra's warm smile (and warm cookies), Roar’s contained temper, and Havoc’s charm prove that it is, in fact, more than concrete and glass. It is a place full of passion and emotions where this family feels comfortable and at home. While the building may be intimidating, I think the cookies are proof that first impressions aren't always right.

“Lacoste got out of the car and stared, amazed. Facing her was a block of concrete and glass. It seemed so out of place, like finding a tent pitched on Fifth Avenue. It didn’t belong. As she walked toward it she realized something else. The house intimidated her and she wondered why. Her own tastes ran to traditional but not stuffy. She loved exposed brick and beams, but hated clutter, though she’d given up all semblance of being a house-proud after the kids came. These days it was a triumph if she walked across a room and didn’t step on something that squeaked.

This place was certainly a triumph. But was it a home?”

It’s foreign. It’s different. It’s alien and out of place. It’s strange and, sometimes, difficult to read.

The house doesn’t blend into its surrounding. It’s not that the architecture is aggressive. It seems out of place, but the agents later come to understand that it was built as a huge window to best contemplate and appreciate the place this family had chosen to settle down in. It is, in fact, a testament to the fact that they appreciate their surroundings to the extent that they built a home that would showcase its beauty.

This scene, to me, is a lesson in first impressions. Lacoste is one of the most open and tolerant characters in the books. She’s thoughtful and doesn’t usually make rash judgments. If it were Beauvoir, we might expect him to be somewhat prejudiced and even derisive – he frequently is towards the Canadian Anglos - the Czech are probably beyond his comfort zone (Hanna Parra even accuses him of profiling in a later conversation although that wasn’t his intention).  As a younger man he sometimes seemed to perceive himself as superior to others – in particular those who were different from himself. I think it's a sign of his deep rooted insecurity. He matured – the hard way – and has become a very different man. But we’ll get back to Beauvoir some other time. This scene is about Lacoste.

“The door was opened by a robust middle-aged woman who spoke very good, though perhaps slightly precise, French. Lascoste was surprised and realized she’d been expecting angular people to live in this angular house.

“Madame Parra?” Agent Lacoste held up her identification. The woman nodded, smiled warmly and stepped back for them to enter.

“Entrez. It’s about what happened at Olivier’s,” said Hanna Parra.

“Oui,” Lacoste bent to take off her muddy boots. It always seemed so awkward and undignified. The world famous homicide team of the Sûreté du Québec interviewing suspects in their stockinged feet.

Madame Parra didn’t tell her not to. But she did give her slippers from a wooden box by the door, jumbled full of old footwear. Again, this surprised Lacoste, who’d expected everything to be neat and tidy. And rigid.”

Lacoste perceives differences and feels intimidated. She compares this triumph of a house with her own messy, loving home. She wonders at what kind of people would choose to live in a place like this and expects them to be angular, rigid, unbending.

The beauty in Lacoste’s character is that she’s always willing to rethink her perceptions. It takes very little for her to reassess her initial ideas and question her first impressions. Very very little. A smile, slippers, tea, and a cookie. She is able to overlook appearances – represented by the house – and see these people for who they are. Or at least to permit herself to be surprised.

“She noticed the teacup had a smiling and waving snowman in a red suit. Bonhomme Carnaval. A character from the annual Quebec City winter carnival. She took a sip. It was strong and sweet.

Like Hanna herself, Lacoste suspected.”

What I love most about this scene is that Louise Penny reminds us of the kind of people it takes to create a diverse community or a heterogeneous group of friends. In a small town like Three Pines, everyone is an outsider and a foreigner until they are welcomed. Three Pines is composed of a wonderful assortment of people. They embrace odd and strange and colorful and secretive and loud and thoughtful and hurt and helpful. The Parras may be more foreign, in a traditional sense, than the Gilberts, for instance. But, to Three Pines, the Parras have already become part of the patchwork that makes up their community.

In a later scene this is explained by Gabri. When he goes to apologize to the Gilberts he also justifies the town’s behavior towards them by making it clear that there is room for diversity and for newcomers, but not for competition and division. The town is wary of the Gilberts (initially), just as they were of CC Poitiers. There is acceptance of all sorts of people. The town is less tolerant of those who undermine or underestimate their own.

I can certainly empathize with the Parras (having frequently been an outsider and a foreigner in various places throughout my life), and I am grateful for all of the Lacostes and Gabris and Claras – and even Ruths - I’ve encountered. They have made me feel welcome.

I hope I, like Lacoste, do the same to those who choose to join us. The new child in my son’s class. The neighbor who moved in upstairs. The new colleague who joins our team at the hospital… And also the “odd” friends who have different tastes in architecture, music, fashion, politics, and books… but who challenge me because they remind me that odd is a subjective quality.

And last, but not least, there’s Havoc. 

One of my absolute favorite bits of Louise Penny’s writing (it makes me smile every time) is Lacoste’s inner dialogue when she meets Havoc.

After a few more yells a short, stocky young man appeared. His face was flushed from hard work and his curly dark hair was tousled. He smiled and Lacoste knew the other waiters at the bistro hadn’t stood a chance with the girls. This boy would take them all. He also stole a sliver of her heart, and she quickly did the figures. She was twenty-eight, he was twenty-one. In twenty-five years that wouldn’t matter so much, although her husband and children might disagree.

Isn’t that brilliant?! I love how Louise pens it. I’m assuming I’m not the only one who can relate to Lacoste’s losing a sliver of her heart. Of course, real-life people have to compete with fictional characters who frequently take over entire chunks of my heart. Beauvoir is one of them, my the way.

I haven’t forgotten the pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. I said they taste like home. And by home, I mean here. My home away from home. A little town we’ve frequently vacationed in and that bears some resemblance to Three Pines in its mountains and size and isolation and delicious bread from a café down the street. I first ate these cookies here and whenever I make them in my real home (often enough) I am transported to this place and these mountains and the trails I run here to make up for the cookies I inevitably eat too many of.

Chewy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

½ cup butter

¾ cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

6 TBS pumpkin puree

1 and ½ cups flour

¼ spoon salt

½ tea spoon baking powder

1 ½ teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon nutmeg

½ teaspoon ginger

½ cup dark mint chocolate chips

Almond slices (optional)

Cashew nuts (optional)
Raisins (optional)

Blend melted butter and sugar. Add vanilla and pumpkin.

Mix dry ingredients.

Add wet to dry ingredients and mix well. Add chocolate.

Leave in refrigerator for at least 30 minutes – at this point I sometimes freeze the dough.

Bake at 350oF for 10 minutes. You want to pull them out of the oven when they’re still soft and look almost undercooked. That way they’re chewy. Perfection!