41. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Rating: ☆☆☆☆
Recommended by:
Author: Rachel Joyce
Genre: Fiction, Happiness
320 pages, published July 24, 2012
Reading Format: Audio Book
Summary
Recently retired and at loose ends, Harold Fry receives a letter from Queenie Hennessy, an old friend and former work colleague who he hasn’t heard from in twenty years who has written to say she is dying and to tell Harold goodbye. Harold writes Queenie a letter in reply and walks to his neighborhood mailbox to post it, but something unexpected happens. Harold becomes convinced that he must deliver his message in person to Queenie, who is 600 miles away in a hospice, because as long as he keeps walking, Harold believes that Queenie will not die. So begins the unexpected pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Harold meets meets various characters along the way who cause Harold to look back on his life and examine his failed relationships with his wife and son.
Quotes
“Upstairs, Maureen shut the door of David’s room quietly and stood a moment breathing him in. She pulled open his blue curtains that she closed every night and checked that there was no dust where the hem of the net drapes met the windowsill. She polished the silver frame of his Cambridge portrait and the black and white baby photograph beside it. She kept the room clean because she was waiting for David to come back and she never knew when that might be. A part of her was always waiting. Men had no idea what it was like to be a mother. The ache of loving a child, even when he had moved on.”
“Harold asked himself if years ago he shouldn’t have pressed Maureen to have another baby. “David is enough,” she had said. “He is all we need.” But sometimes he was afraid that having one son was too much to bear. He wondered if the pain of loving became diluted the more you had. A child’s growing was a constant pushing away.”
“People were buying milk, or filling their cars with petrol, or even posting letters. And what no one else knew was the appalling weight of the thing they were carrying inside. The superhuman effort it took sometimes to be normal, and a part of things that appeared both easy and everyday. The loneliness of that.”
“If I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, it stands to reason that I’m going to get there. I’ve begun to think we sit far more than we’re supposed to.” He smiled. “Why else would we have feet?”
“you could be ordinary and attempt something extraordinary, without being able to explain it in a logical way.”
“He must have driven this way countless times, and yet he had no memory of the scenery. He must have been so caught up in the day’s agenda, and arriving punctually at their destination, that the land beyond the car had been no more than a wash of one green, and a backdrop of one hill. Life was very different when you walked through it.”
“There was no escaping what he had realized as he fought for warmth in the night. With or without him,the moon and the wind would go on, rising and falling. The land would keep stretching ahead until it hit the sea. People would keep dying. It made no difference if Harold walked, or trembled, or stayed at home.”
“I miss her all the time. I know in my head that she has gone. The only difference is that I am getting used to the pain. It’s like discovering a great hole in the ground. To begin with, you forget it’s there and keep falling in. After a while, it’s still there, but you learn to walk round it.”
“… He went under the stars, and the tender light of the moon, when it hung like an eyelash and the tree trunks shone like bones. He walked through wind and weather, and beneath sun-bleached skies. It seemed to Harold that he had been waiting all his life to walk. He no longer knew how far he had come, but only that he was going forward. The pale Cotswold stone became the red brick of Warwickshire, and the land flattened into middle England. Harold reached his hand to his mouth to brush away a fly, and felt a beard growing in thick tufts. Queenie would live. He knew it.”
My Take
I really loved listening to The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. This is a beautifully written book about the human spirit, the meaning of life, and coming to terms with not only what you did in life, but more importantly what you failed to do. As a side note, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, reminded me a lot of A Man Called Ove, another book I read this year and really enjoyed.
