Two weeks ago at my Red
Read Robin book club, we discussed the book The
Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce. Unlike the last book I wrote about Grandma Gatewood’s Walk, this was a book
of fiction about a man who took off on a walk.
Harold Fry is recently
retired and lives in a small English village with his wife Maureen who seems to
be irritated with him much of the time. He spends a lot of time sitting in his
recliner or mowing the lawn, while Maureen spends every day dusting, sweeping
and cleaning the house whether it needs it or not and talking on the phone to
their son, David. Then one day a letter arrives from a woman he used to work
with and hasn’t seen or heard from in twenty years. Queenie Hennessy is in a
hospice and is writing a good-bye to him because she’s dying of cancer.
He writes a reply, but
before he can mail it to her in the mailbox down the road a chance encounter
with a girl at a gas station makes him decide to deliver his message to Queenie
in person. In his yachting shoes and light coat, Harold Fry starts out on an
urgent quest determined to walk six hundred miles to the hospice. He believes
as long as he walks, Queenie will live. He’s left his phone and his wallet
behind. He meets many people along the way, many that help him and many who
think he’s crazy.
Maureen has no idea what happened to him. She
starts talking to the widower next door who lost his wife recently. Eventually
Harold calls her collect and tells her what he’s doing. She thinks he’s crazy
but starts to realize she really misses him. As he goes along, he calls his
wife to talk briefly with her, but both of them can’t quite tell the other they
miss them.
Like Grandma Gates,
people ask him why he’s walking, and eventually reporters write about him and
people start joining him to walk on the pilgrimage to save Queenie’s life.
The book has wonderful
reviews from The Washington Post, The New York Times, and People, and everyone
in our book club who read it loved it and we had so much to say about it. I
loved it so much that after I returned it to the library I bought a used copy
at The Village Book Store plus her 2nd book called The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy which
she wrote after this book. I haven’t read it yet, but look forward to it. Her
first book had me smiling at times, and worrying about him at other times, and
sometimes feeling teary eyed, too. I won’t tell you how it ends because I’m
hoping you’ll read and enjoy the book, too.
What book have you read
that had you smiling at times and a little teary eyed at other times, too.
