Library Director’s Notebook May 2014 The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel...

Thu, 05/08/2014 - 11:38am -- KChin

Library Director’s Notebook

May 2014

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The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

Some wise advice that has been given to novice writers of novels is to start their story as close as possible to the “day that was different”.  Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, certainly heeds this advice with remarkable skill.

Harold Fry is a newly retired man whose life has fallen into an uncomfortable, albeit typical rut.  With very little to occupy his time, no true friends and only a nodding acquaintance with his neighbors, no deep interests or absorbing hobbies, and worst of all with  a prickly and at times even hostile relationship with his wife, Harold feels very little pleasure in his existence.

One day Harold receives a surprising letter.  The letter is from a female co-worker whom Harold has not seen for decades.  The writer, Queenie Hennessy,  says that she is dying of cancer in a hospice and that she felt she wanted to say a few words of farewell to Harold, who had always treated her with kindness. 

The letter astonishes Harold.  He is touched that Queenie remembered him and had reached out to him in such an unexpected way.  Setting out to post a return letter to Queenie, Harold finds himself walking   right past the letter box.  Instead Harold decides that he will continue walking until he reaches Queenie, a journey of more than 600 miles.  In a kind of epiphany, Harold believes that Queenie, despite her rapidly advancing illness, will stay alive as long as he is walking to her.

To say that this trip is ill-advised would be an understatement! Harold is improperly dressed, out of shape, has no idea how to get to the hospice,  very little money, and–horrors–doesn’t even have his cell phone with him!  His sufferings, especially in the early days of his pilgrimage, are extreme.  His wife and neighbors think he has gone mad, and Harold at times thinks they must be right.  Yet the more he walks the more he believes in himself and the closer he comes to a feeling of purpose and peace.

As he walks, mile after mile, Harold meets many people, all with their own stories and worries and plans.  He is moved and changed by these unplanned interactions, but even more so, he is moved with compassion for his own unhappy life and experiences, particularly those involving his troubled son, David.  There is a mystery surrounding David and a burden of guilt for Harold that keeps him in sadness and torment even as he also blossoms with the beauty of his journey.

Some unexpected twists crop up along Harold’s path that threaten the success of his pilgrimage. Meanwhile, his wife Maureen, at first an impatient skeptic of all things Harold , begins to find her own bitter prejudices and disappointments starting to shift in disturbing ways.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is filled with a sense of light and hope, even during Harold’s darkest hours and most heartbreaking memories.  Like all pilgrims, Harold carries with him a vision of a better world, a world that cannot be quite dismissed or crushed or buried, so long as there are some people who believe in the near divinity of the human spirit.

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