How do you feel about Fiona and Sam?

The cunning 13 year old Fiona makes me nervous. She is psychologically traumatized because of the horrible acts her mother subjected her to. Her childhood was ripped away from her because of her mother and at the tender age of 13 she was now running her mother’s illegal business as means of survival while caring for her younger brother instead of enjoying teenage life. It was that first smile of Sam’s at Gamache, how he flipped the switch in demeanor, like turning a light switch on or off, that sent the hairs on the back of Armand’s neck on edge. It was that smile that tipped me off as to how dangerous this 10 year old was. Jean-Guy couldn’t begin to see through the sobbing young 10 year old who climbed on his lap and hung on for dear life. Over the years Beauvoir thought Gamache was totally wrong about Sam. However, in the end it was the Gamaches’ nurturing of Fiona that saved their lives when she told Amelia and Hannah what was happening at the Gamche house.

My imagination doesn’t want to picture the trauma they lived through, so I’ll concentrate on how they dealt with it. Sam, even at 10, the age he was rescued, was very damaged. He was able to act the part of a grieving, frightened child with Jean Guy but then turn and smile at Gimache, as if to say, “gotcha!”. Later, when he is an adult, Gamache can see beyond his pretenses to the psychotic person he actually is, though others don’t seem to see it. In the end, we find out the truth. I don’t really feel sorry for him, though I know I should. He was a victim of terrible abuse and maybe wasn’t able to recover from that. Then we have Fiona, who at the age of 13, confessed to killing her mother and planning the crime. Gamache suspects Sam was much more involved in the murder, but he wasn’t charged. Fiona grew up in jail, but still managed to get her degree in engineering, with the help of Reine-Marie and Armand. She was able to put her past behind her, though she was still easily influenced by her brother and father, John Fleming. In the end, she showed her loyalty to Gamache rather than to her psychopath family. I think these two examples of trauma victims illustrate possible outcomes, whether by choice or chance we become the adults we are.

I share Armand’s assessment and distrust of Sam along with Myrna, Hardye Moel and Amelia. Surely he was damaged by his abuse as a child but that was not the only issue, not sufficient to explain his criminal behavior. Jean-Guy and Reine-Marie were taken in by him. Fiona is more complicated to me. She absolutely betrayed Armand and Reine-Marie, their generosity and Armand’s trust of her. Did she really know what Fleming and Sam intended; I suspect not but she played a role in their plans however they explained them and provided openings only she could have to their home and lives. I think Jean-Guy saw in Sam what he wanted to see, a vulnerable and damaged kid and missed multiple clues about Sam’s bad/criminal behavior. I think Armand, Jean-Guy and Reine-Marie were all both correct in their views of Fiona and also wrong in some ways.

I think both Fiona and Sam are psychopaths, whether by nature or nurture, who’s to say. But…both still live, and I think may still be a danger to Gamache, Jean Guy, and their families. PS I think Reine Marie sees right through Fiona.
It was interesting to see Jean Guy was taken in by Sam from the start. Throughout the earlier books he is always the skeptical and more detached one.
Armand, on the other hand, was so honed in on Sam, that even through the years, he never truly contemplated Fiona as a threat.
I am not convinced of any inherent goodness in Fiona. I think she won out over both her father and her brother switching sides. A master stroke.

I found Sam to be horrible from the beginning and initially I had a soft spot for Fiona but that dissolved over time. Their childhood was a nightmare but I’m pretty sure they were doomed no matter what. And of course Armand would have wanted to believe the best in both. I was a little surprised by Jean-Guy’s early response to Sam. We don’t usually see him be so compassionate. Maybe Sam is the one who made him a little cynical about people

Sam gave me the creeps from the beginning. As a psychologist, I have worked with a lot of severely traumatized children, I don’t think that Sam was salvageable.

I’ve always been struck by the women in this novel. A little less than halfway the stories of women comes to the fore. Ruth the witch, keeper of the stories, The Graces- Reine-Marie, Clara, and Myrna; the Muses – the changling (or cuckoo) Fiona, the warrior Amelia, and courage Harriet; and Sylvie the witch and keeper of lies.
And I love the way Penny gradually increases the focus to the women.

I found Sam and Fiona difficult to read about and contemplate. I had enormous sympathy for the horrible upbringing they endured, but also felt there was something intrinsically “wrong” with their mindset. I definitely felt that Sam was an antisocial psychopath— whether that could have been triggered by this early abuse, or whether he was, as Armand suspected, born with it. I was more ambivalent about Fiona. She seemed to be able to eventually set some boundaries on her behavior and feel real emotions whereas I don’t think Sam is capable of that. Fiona felt love for her brother, and guilt (and fear, I think). I think he was the one behind the idea of that initial murder; I can see him convincing her that it would solve all their problems. The fact that he was so manipulative and knowing in that first encounter with Armand and Jean-Guy— knew how to fool JG, knew how to taunt Armand — shows a certain evil genius, even at such an early age. As for their relationships with Armand and JG, Sam stayed the course; knew he could fool JG, knew he couldn’t fool Armand, and didn’t want to fool him, because he knew it caused pain. I think Jean-Guy (“a kind man in shit’s clothing,” as Armand has said) saw what he expected to see, and perhaps could relate to— a sad, misunderstood little boy. I am still not sure about how I feel about Fiona, though. I think she did mean to improve herself and have a more “normal” life (it takes a lot of work for her to get that engineering degree, and she had the talent for it); I think that she may have gotten most of her inspiration for all that by Armand and Reine-Marie’s mentorship and her time at Three Pines. What’s unclear to me is what she thought and felt when her dad entered, or re-entered, her life. Did she ever even know him before? In which case, was she a daughter trying to bond with her father, trying to gain approval, and not fully aware of just how awful he really was until his full plan was exposed? Or did she just slip comfortably into the role (and how much does fear enter into it— she’s working with 2 of the scariest people on the planet, and she’s no fool). But in the end, something made her step away from them, so I think maybe she wasn’t fully aware of the whole plot, and could recognize some form of “wrongness.” I can see why Armand wanted to trust her; it’s in his nature, and his instincts were right that Sam was pure evil and Fiona wasn’t (entirely), but he wasn’t 100% right about her. And Jean-Guy was right that she wasn’t purely honest and trustworthy, but SO wrong about Sam. He gets no points on that one! Personally, from a narrative point of view, I would rather that Sam had been polished off in this book, because I fear him coming back again in another– he’s hard too on the blood pressure! But of course I would read it….