Harold Fry has been languishing on my shelf for years, just waiting for me to get around to meeting him. I was expecting a charming, sweet story of personal challenge and growth. I was expecting something heart warming and deeply emotional. What I got was… not exactly that.
This book has a simple story – Harold Fry gets a letter from a woman he used to know. She is in a care home with terminal cancer. He tries to write a response, but isn’t happy with the results. Nonetheless, he puts his jacket on and walks to the post-box to mail it. But when he gets there, he can’t do it. So instead, he starts walking. What begins as a whim becomes a mission. He becomes convinced that as long as he’s walking to her, Queenie will stay alive.
Harold meets a bunch of people on his way. One is a reporter who publishes a story about his mission. People start recognizing him. Some want to join him because they’re looking for direction themselves. Some help him on his way. But eventually he’s back on his own.
As he’s walking, we learn more about his life, and we also get to know his wife Maureen, who he left at home alone. We learn of their challenges, of the separate pain they are each carrying. We see them begin to work through some of the emotions they had bottled up and that had made them retreat into their own spaces.
This wasn’t exactly the book I expected. It was darker and less of an inspiring pilgrimage. I didn’t always understand the internal logic to Harold’s decisions, and frankly I didn’t care that much about the characters. I think the one I felt the most for was Maureen, but we don’t spend that much time with her.
I was disappointed that I didn’t have a stronger connection to this book, and that when I finished it, it didn’t really stay with me. I’m glad I finally got to it, but it didn’t leave me wanting to move on to other books by this author, and it didn’t make me want to revisit it in the future. I think there’s definitely some good points in there for discussion, so it would be a great book club pick. It just wasn’t what I was looking for when I picked it up.
Recently retired, sweet, emotionally numb Harold Fry is jolted out of his passivity by a letter from Queenie Hennessy, an old friend, who he hasn’t heard from in twenty years. She has written to say she is in hospice and wanted to say goodbye. Leaving his tense, bitter wife Maureen to her chores, Harold intends a quick walk to the corner mailbox to post his reply but instead, inspired by a chance encounter, he becomes convinced he must deliver his message in person to Queenie–who is 600 miles away–because as long as he keeps walking, Harold believes that Queenie will not die. So without hiking boots, rain gear, map or cell phone, one of the most endearing characters in current fiction begins his unlikely pilgrimage across the English countryside. Along the way, strangers stir up memories–flashbacks, often painful, from when his marriage was filled with promise and then not, of his inadequacy as a father, and of his shortcomings as a husband. Ironically, his wife Maureen, shocked by her husband’s sudden absence, begins to long for his presence. Is it possible for Harold and Maureen to bridge the distance between them? And will Queenie be alive to see Harold arrive at her door? – Goodreads
Book Title: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Author: Rachel Joyce
Series: Yes – Harold Fry #1
Edition: Paperback/Audiobook
Published By: Anchor Canada
Released: March 15, 2012
Genre: Fiction, Character Driven, Personal Growth
Pages: 384
Date Read: August 12-16, 2021
Rating: 5/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 3.91/5 (161,109 ratings)
Interesting about your connections with the characters. I really liked this one, but couldn’t get into the book of
Queenie’s story at all.
Yeah, I don’t know what it was. It could have been timing, or maybe I wasn’t in the right mental place, maybe it just wasn’t the right one for me… who knows. I know a lot of people who have loved it, so it’s definitely not the book!