After its release
two years ago, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of
Harold Fry became a bestseller almost immediately, and was longlisted for
the Man Booker prize. It’s one of those books I’ve been meaning to read since
it came out, not only because of its brilliant title, but because it was
thoroughly recommended to me by so many people. So I finally got around to
reading it (or perhaps I should say listening, as I’ve got the audiobook), and I
was not disappointed.
The premise of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is
both simple and effective. Reeling from the news that an old friend of his is
dying of cancer, Harold Fry, a pensioner from Devon, sets out to post a letter
to her. And then he just keeps on walking. In fact, he decides to walk all the
way from where he is now to Queenie Hennessy’s hospice. He sets out to walk
from Devon to Berwick-upon-Tweed, in the hope that somehow the very act of walking
with save her life.
What I like about The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is
that it doesn’t ever really feel unlikely.
Logically, what Harold does, though possible, would be an incredibly strange
feat to attempt to real life. Yet Joyce’s novel is certainly one to make you
have faith in the possibility of the extraordinary, and the way Harold’s walk
is described means that it never feels unnatural. No more than once or twice in
the novel did I sit back from reading and think, well, no one would ever do
this. Joyce manages to brilliantly suspend your disbelief. Every movement,
every person who Harold meets on his walk, even the escalation of his
‘pilgrimage’ towards the end of his novel – in this author’s skilled hand, all
of this is made believable.
Joyce’s
characterisation is superb. Harold is brilliantly created and sustained,
although it’s Maureen who I was most impressed by. Her development over the
novel, and Joyce’s slow revealing of her character is done very well. At first
we are tempted to view her as boring, but she’s left to capture our sympathies
in the cleverest of ways. I love how small details, such as her constant
cleaning, become a tool to reveal her character and state of mind. I also
thought Rex was a lovely and poignant creation. Moreover, every individual that
Harold meets along his journey, from Will to the leader of the cycling mothers,
from Martina to the nuns at Queenie’s hospice – every single one is endowed
with their own character, and every single one feels three dimensional,
complex, real. Joyce subtly undercuts
your expectations and assumptions, presenting you with people that really do feel
like people. It is as though behind every character – however major or minor –
that appears in The Unlikely Pilgrimage
of Harold Fry, there is another whole novel worth of backstory to be told.
What most impresses
me is the manner in which Joyce slowly reveals the past, gently engaging your
suspense and hinting at the web of relations between the characters. We get to
slowly work out what has happened in Harold’s life up to this point, to guess
at his feelings for Queenie, for Maureen, and hers for his. I like the way that
Harold’s walk across England simultaneously lets him walk into the story of his
childhood, of his marriage with Maureen and his relationship with his son
David. I am always fond of novels that deal at once with the past and the
present, and here we’ve given another such dual story. This book is as much
about Harold’s life up until this point as it is about his walk, his ‘unlikely
pilgrimage’, itself.
I have very little
to criticise. I’ll admit that it took me a little while to get into the novel,
although this may be partly because I listened to it on audiobook rather than
reading it in book form, and I sometimes find audiobooks easier to forget about
than physical books. Still, I found the novel didn’t completely grip me until
about chapter twelve. From then on, however, I was hooked. Apart from one minor
moment near the end that I was unconvinced about, I found The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry a thoroughly poignant and
engaging read.
It’s an utterly lovely
novel. I don’t mean this in a patronising or condensing way. It’s also a
brilliantly and thoughtfully written novel. But its sheer loveliness was what I
found most compelling; this is a book that is a complete joy to read. Certainly
it deals with difficult and tragic elements of life, but it is also a novel
that consistently keeps a brilliant sense of optimism, a love of life and
humanity that rings through the story and its characters. It is a celebration
of ordinary people and the extraordinary things they can do.
Greatest
strength: I
think probably the depth of emotion conveyed in this novel. It’s a beautiful
story, and is lovingly told in a very moving way. The sheer humanity Joyce
manages to convey is just lovely.
Greatest
weakness: I did
find it a little slow going at first. It took me several chapters to get really
into it, and it was only about half way through that I began to be really
gripped by the book.
Let’s
finish on a quote:
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.
Next week: What I Loved, by Siri Hustvedt
Ooo sounds good!! :)
ReplyDeleteDid you know that you can shorten your urls with Shortest and get money from every visitor to your shortened links.
ReplyDelete