The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry: The uplifting and redemptive No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller (Harold Fry, 1)

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A funny book, a wise book, a charming book . . . Harold Fry is just wonderful ... I love this book' ERICA WAGNER, THE TIMES

Medieval forms persist. Pilgrimage, Jonathan Sumption’s first book, published in 1975 when he was still an academic before he turned lawyer and controversialist, is a wonderfully detailed study of the entire phenomenon, as practised from late antiquity to the Reformation, relishing all its peculiarities. Pilgrimage, he concludes, maintains a fitful existence to this day. The needs it serves are perpetual perhaps. I admire Rachel Joyce's writing and how she creates living, breathing characters. Readers who loved her books about Harold and Queenie will want to read this one, also. Maureen is written as a novella and is about Harold's wife. I don't believe it can be read without benefit of having read at least one of the earlier books. The book launches where Maureen is embarking on a pilgrimage of her own, with the blessing and urging of her husband Harold. I don't want to elaborate on the details as the reader needs to discover this along with Maureen on their own. Along the way she is as forthright and unpleasant as ever, but learns some lessons along the way. Told in simple, emotionally-honest prose, with a mischievous bite, this is a novel about the journey we all must take to learn who we are; it is about loving and letting go. And most of all it is about finding joy in unexpected places and at times we least expect.Although readers may have pondered this question over the years, Rachel Joyce didn’t originally envision this as a trilogy although one reader told her years ago, that it absolutely was. Realizing that she really had not quite let go of the characters, she decided to finally let Maureen have a voice. RJ: Yeah, I’d always wanted to write a book. Even when I was a child, I wanted to write a book. I've always, always loved reading, and when I was a child, I felt met by books and contained by books and I kind of traveled with books. So, they were really important to me. But I think it was also writing things down was just how I worked things out and expressed myself. Even though there are obstacles to overcome, at its heart, Maureen is a character-driven story. Creating complex and quirky characters is what Rachel Joyce does best. Themes The last of the Harold Fry trilogy, this time featuring Maureen, Harold's wife. She hears about Queenie's garden in Embleton Bay and that her son David is in it, so she makes a pilgrimage of her own to see it, to find him in it. I’m enthusiastically recommending novella-length Maureen for fans of character-driven literary fiction, for readers who love The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, and for those who appreciate stories with mature characters. Of course, book clubs will find a great deal to discuss here.

This time we have the story from Maureen’s point of view years after Harold and Queenie’s stories. Maureen is a difficult character to like but through this book I came to understand her more. Maureen has a journey of her own to undertake, both physically and mentally, to process her grief. Rachel Joyce: My Man Booker longlisted novel was dedicated to my dying father, The Daily Telegraph 1 August 2012, retrieved 10 March 2014

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This was a short book and I was able to read it in a single sitting and it does not work as a stand-alone. If you’ve read the other two books you might be curious to read this one just to get some closure of some sort but other than that I cannot recommend it. EC: Yeah. I love that all of your books end with hopefulness, even though all of them deal with tragedy in some way. I've really loved that about listening to them. You talk about your work writing for radio plays. How did that inform your novel writing? That's obviously interesting to us at Audible. How did you think about how the audiobook would be when you were writing these? Maureen, although anxious about him, for a long time doesn't think of driving to provide help. Much later, when he has reached Yorkshire she drives up to see him. She thinks of joining his pilgrimage, but when he invites her she refuses, saying "It was selfish of me to ask you to give up your walk. Forgive me, Harold", to which replies, "I’m the one who needs forgiveness" (232). When Harold gets a note from one of the new friends he made along his way which says she read that Queenie had made a garden with “a monument to your son”, Maureen knows she wants to see it. Harold tells her she must go. She must, to see what this garden has to do with David.

Maureen and Harold live a quiet life after Harold’s famous and highly publicized trek across England. Maureen is restless, though, and after she receives a strange letter, she decides that she must make a journey of her own. Rachel Joyce is so wise! She sees the 'essential loneliness of people' and digs into the causes of it. No matter what, they deserve respect. I am the richer for having read these books. When Harold Fry nips out one morning to post a letter, leaving his wife hoovering upstairs, he has no idea that he is about to walk from one end of the country to the other. The following morning I woke early and took a walk by myself along the water, going as far as I could until there was nothing ahead of me except the River Tweed and the North Sea. This may sound far-fetched but I realized in that moment the reason I had come. I was there to say thank you—to Harold, to Maureen, to whatever, for giving me those books. I had been allowed, because of the success of those books, to hold onto my grief, and identify myself even as a daughter who had lost her father.This is the 3rd installment to the companion reads " The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry" and " The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy", and centers upon the wife of Harold Fry. Maureen Fry was a complex and rather carmudgeonly figure that begged to be fleshed out among this trilogy of characters. She is also the most unlikeable, and my opinion did not change much by the end of the book. Maureen has settled into life after Harold’s epic journey. And finds it hard to make friends easily. Ten years later she gets a message that in Queenies Garden they have put a sculpture of her late son David. She misses him terribly and decides to make the journey up north to see this garden for herself, even though this is a challenge for her. But she must do this. But unlike Harold she decides to drive there. But she seems to get lost on the way as everything has changed over the years and she asks someone for directions. Which is not an easy task for her. But she eventually gets there, with Harold on the phone cheering her on. This was a poignant, lovely read, filled with compassion, a story of both growth and healing with a perfect ending. EC: What I thought was remarkable is how consistent her voice was from the first book to this third book, which is 10 years later. The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy tells Queenie's story of her days in hospice. Queenie knows Harold is on his way to visit her and realizes she must confront the past she left behind twenty years ago. She writes a poignant letter to Harold while he walks to deliver his letter to her.