Sunny's bookshelf
Sunny's bookshelf photo by Judy Solomon

Online book reviews since 2011, the very best in reviewing – connecting good readers with equally good writers

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Sign up to receive our latest reviews by email

Rachel Joyce may not be a household name to American readers yet, but when The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry hits the bookstores this July, that could change. Joyce, herself a pilgrim of sorts, has journeyed through a twenty year acting career and an award winning stint as a playwright for UK radio and television, and now steps smartly onto the road as a novelist.

Harold Fry, husband and father, is a most ordinary man who, at the age of sixty-five, has just received a brief note of goodbye from a woman he once worked with, a woman he had not seen for twenty years. Queenie Hennesy is dying of cancer and Harold, moved to near-tears, reluctantly recalls why her dying so touches him. He writes a brief, inadequate note, puts it in an envelope and tells his wife he’s off to post the note. His wife asks, “Will you be long?” Unaware that his pilgrimage is about to begin, he answers, “I’m only going to the end of the road.”

For this reviewer, the novel is not so much a Pilgrim’s Progress, as other reviewers have suggested, but more a modern Canterbury Tales, with a hospice care facility 600 miles away in Berwick upon Tweed as a destination rather than Canterbury Cathedral. Fry gathers other pilgrims, some for no more than a brief encounter and others who will, for a period of time, journey with him. From them he learns about believing in that which is beyond belief; that Queenie will live because he is walking to see her.

Fry’s journey takes him to more than cities, rivers, sheds to sleep in or highways  to avoid; it takes him inward, to himself, his wife, his son. He is not a great thinker or planner, a man not even up to trading in an old pair of yachting shoes for more appropriate hiking boots. In the weeks it takes him to walk six hundred miles (from Kingsbridge, South Hams to Berwick-upon-Tweed), he sees more than the English countryside for the first time. Fry is a man most comfortable with his anonymity, but that is lost when the story of his journey hits the papers and goes viral on Twitter. Harold Fry no longer walks just to keep Queenie alive; he walks to find his truth, which he must reach before Queenie’s death.

I like to think that every person who reads this novel will become a fellow pilgrim. I’m certain many will recommend Rachel Joyce’s book to others and I suspect that those who follow such recommendations will, at some point in the narrative, stop to think about that person and wonder what part of the story they liked best. Of course it is Harold Fry’s journey, but without giving anything away, it is also my journey, and that of my friend who recommended it, and will be yours by the time you finish reading it. We will all know ourselves and each other a little more than we had before reading The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.    -s.s.

Rachel Joyce Random House

Add your thoughts and comments...

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Share this Review
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Related Reviews

Facing The Mountain

Facing The Mountain

    Daniel James Brown’s Facing the Mountain, A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II, is the rich telling of the plight faced

Read More »
The Little Sister

The Little Sister

The Little Sister – A first Philip Marlowe novel brings this reviewer into an enthusiastic appreciation of Raymond Chandler who makes (for me) the mystery

Read More »

About the Reviewer

Sign up for reviews by email

You’ll get email updates from Bookin’ with Sunny when we add a new review or blog post, and we never share your email with anyone else.

Shopping in-store Fun!

Support your local community’s economic growth by shopping for books at your independent bookstore in person, online at their website, or by phone.