Rachel Joyce

Rachel Joyce’s debut novel The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry told of the spontaneous walk that became a pilgrimage, by the unassuming and little-loved ex brewery salesman Harold Fry. He went out one day to post a letter to his former colleague Queenie Hennessy whom he had learned was nearing the end of her life in a hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland.

Harold decided to keep on walking, wearing a pair of inadequate boat shoes, no money or warning to anyone, he walked for weeks, hoping Queenie had received his message to wait for him. We knew little of Queenie’s story or history and even less of what she was going through and how she perceived Harold’s act of spontaneity, until now with this second book, which takes us back to the beginning of the story, interpreted now from Queenie’s point of view.

Rachel Joyce brings us inside the mind of Queenie, who upon hearing from Harold decides to write him an extremely long letter, going right back to when she first applied for a job at the brewery where they both worked, including her first memorable glimpse of him, her undying and denied, unconditional love for him and her never spoken of relationship with his troubled son David.

As well as revealing her relationship and hidden feelings for Harold, we meet her fellow patients in the hospice, diminshed physically yes, but with their characters fully prominent, intact and proudly on display, from The Pearly King, Finty, grumpy Mr Henderson to the nuns who take care of them.

Queenie receives Harold’s letter which reads:

I am very sorry.

Best Wishes.

P.S. Wait for me.

and learns from Sister Catherine that he has called from a telephone box, in Kingsbridge, South Devon, something about waiting and that he was walking.

“I knew your writing. One glance and my pulse was flapping. Great, I thought. I don’t hear from the man in twenty years, and then he sends a letter and gives me a heart attack.”

“I held tight on to your envelope, along with my notebook. I saw the dancing of crimson light beyond my eyelids as we moved from the dayroom to the corridor and then past the windows. I kept my eyes shut all the way, even as I was lowered onto the bed, even as the curtains were drawn with a whoosh against the pole, even as I heard the click of the door, afraid that if I opened my eyes the wash of tears would never stop.

Harold Fry is coming, I thought. I have waited twenty years, and now he is coming.”

The next morning Queenie wakes to find a new volunteer in her room who has observed her crying in her sleep, the nun, who introduces herself as Sister Mary Inconnu, reads Queenie’s hand scribbled message that said it was too late to wait for Harold and suggests she write him a second letter, that she will help her by typing up her notes each day.

She said, “I have a plan. We’re going to write him a second letter. Don’t forget, you opened this can of worms when you sent your first one. So now you need to finish. Only this time, don’t give him the sort of message he might expect from a gift card. Tell him the truth, the whole truth. Tell him how it really was.”

Harold’s walk is just one of the many journey’s represented, everything becomes a symbol of slow perseverance towards some kind of end; Sister Lucy and her jigsaw puzzle of England, the pieces placed progressively over the weeks of Harold’s walk revealing regions of England and Wales, racing towards the Midlands; Queenie’s own 20 year story of unconditional love, the evolution, growth and eventual destruction of her sea-garden; her friendship with David and the deathly progression of disease among the hospice patients, they who hold onto the very last threads of existence, their spirits given an additional and unexpected thrill in following the increasingly heard-of pilgrimage of this Harold Fry, albeit alongside the less joyous symptoms of bodies in decline.

Despite the sad circumstances, it’s a fun book to read either alone or as a companion to Harold Fry, it is written as a second person narrative, using “you” just as she would have done in writing a letter, which has the effect of limiting the perspective, in a similar way that Colm Tóibín did in his 3rd person limited perspective of Nora Webster, reviewed here. Queenie’s narrative was less frustrating for me than Nora’s, possibly because she is reflecting on the past that can not be changed. I found it quietly compelling, tragic and humorous both, often surreal.

Note: This was an ARC (Advance Reader Copy) kindly provided by the US publisher via NetGalley.

There is something appealing about the idea of making a pilgrimage and reading about it is almost as satisfying on another level, even when the pilgrim in question doesn’t know that is what he is doing.

Harold Fry was not prepared for a pilgrimage at all, he was on his way to post a letter, a note written in haste that the closer he came to the post-box, the less satisfied he was with what he had composed, as if the letter had somehow come to represent all that he had achieved with his life – showing him up as incapable of stringing together the appropriate words that might express the sentiment he wished to convey – while harbouring his mild but growing discontent, he continues on to the next post-box and then the next and then one thing lead to another…

Harold’s letter is a reply to Queenie Hennessy, an ex-colleague whom he hasn’t seen since the day she disappeared from work, a disappearance that is in some way connected to Harold. Queenie’s short letter informs Harold of her illness, he learns she is lying in a hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed, in the very northern tip of England, about as far from Kingsbridge, South Devon as one could possibly be.

The walk to the post-box and an encounter with a young shop assistant in a garage prove to be the tipping point for Harold, he sets off to Berwick, convinced that by making his pilgrimage, he might save Queenie from certain death.

Harolds journey up England

Harold is propelled by instinct, an urgency to make some kind of difference and as his feet carry him North, little by little he comes to understand the significance of his undertaking, as the layers of his self-protective habits built up over the years, peel away at a similar rate to the soles of his shabby yachting shoes, until eventually even words are no longer required to explain; his purpose and inspiration shine out of him, attracting followers and making him almost unrecognisable to the woman he has lived with for the past forty years, his wife Maureen.

Harold believed his journey was truly beginning. He had thought it started the moment he decided to walk to Berwick, but he now saw that he had been naïve. Beginnings could happen more than once, or in different ways. You could think you were starting something afresh, when actually what you were doing was carrying on as before. He had faced his shortcomings and overcome them, and so the real business of was walking was happening only now.

Rachel Joyce’s debut novel was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, however it would be wrong to think of her as a novice writer and as the back pages inform us, she has written over twenty original afternoon plays for BBC Radio 4 as well as adaptations television drama. It is clear right from the first pages that this is a confident and accomplished writer and I couldn’t help but imagine these characters already on-screen, it is as if we have seen Harold before, so much of that reserved part of his character seems so familiar, even if he does appear to fill a stereotype, however he does not remain typecast for long, yet neither does he change completely.

It may be stating the obvious, but this is a very English novel – well how could it not be when the protagonist is an Englishman traversing his country from one end to the other; it is not just the landscape, it is the slow unmasking of Harold, a man who barely made a ripple in his working life having done his best to keep unpleasant matters from being aired or making a fuss.

He had always been too English; by which he supposed he meant that he was ordinary. He lacked colour. Other people knew interesting stories, or had things to ask. He didn’t like to ask, because he didn’t like to offend. He wore a tie every day but sometimes he wondered if he was hanging on to an order or set of rules that had never really existed.

Overall, a most enjoyable read and I am sure we will be seeing more from Rachel Joyce, she is at work on her second novel, another “celebrating the ordinary, linking laughter and pain” story, she has said.

Interview – Rachel Joyce discusses how her background writing radio plays informed the novel and how her father (to whom she dedicates the book)and others shaped the character of Harold.