The Unlikely Journey

Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. Read reviews that mention harold fry rachel joyce unlikely pilgrimage thought provoking well written beautifully written pilgrimage of harold really enjoyed along the way good read easy read heart warming enjoyed this book thoroughly enjoyed great read loved this book long time page turner book club highly recommend. Showing of 4, reviews. Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now.

Please try again later. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. Fantastic exploration of the relationship between two boys and their involvement with a scientific anomaly that impacts on their lives, their families and their futures. The two lads are drawn with a delicate touch whilst the other characters remain shadowy, most ethereal.

There is a lot of humour drawn from the immaturity of youth and this is gradually overwhelmed by the harsh reality of the ugliness of human exploitation on a very small scale. Tragedy leads to overwhelming mental stress and long term loss for one of the characters, but the book manages to trace this lightly and with great depth of feeling.

There are several sublime sequences in the book that ring true and genuinely lift the heart.

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Joyce seems to be able to write about the most mundane events in life in an extraordinary way, endowing beauty where you had not previously expected it. I hovered between a 4 and a 5, due to a slight loss of pace in the middle of the book. My true rating is 4. Harold Fry is a humble man who has made mistakes in life that he does not fully understand. One day a letter arrives from an old friend, Queenie Hennessey, whom he has not seen for twenty years.

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Queenie is dying from inoperable cancer and his written to Harold to thank him for his friendship and to say goodbye. Unsure how to respond, Harold writes an ineffectual reply that he takes to the post box but does not post. His spontaneous decision is the start of a mile walk to Berwick-on-Tweed to say goodbye to Queenie in person.

The journey that follows is expertly written in simple, light prose and its simplicity can take your breath away. While walking, Harold reflects on his life and his broken marriage with his wife Maureen, who has been left behind wondering if he will ever return. His memories of failing to engage with David as a child are heartbreaking. Despite it being a light read, I was very moved by this novel.

Harold may be an ordinary every-man, but his pain is clearly drawn and I related to his regrets. He is all of us and anyone can find some aspect of their own life in him. I really enjoyed this book: Rachel Joyce has great faith in the human spirit and great faith in Harold. Perhaps if all us took a similar pilgrimage, we might become more aware of what it really means to be human. Then one day, Byron witnesses a disastrous mistake made by his mother while on their way back from school.

We are also introduced to Jim, a middle aged man in the present day. Struggling to maintain his job cleaning tables in a cafe while coping with the crushing reality of OCD, Joyce presents a unique character who is haunted by his past.

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While the two stories seem unrelated at first, as the plot develops we are made aware of why they are interlinked. Perfect is beautifully written. It tackles the interesting and unique perspective of a character who has OCD, and gives the reader an insightful view of him growing up and dealing with everyday situations and problems.

Joyce perfects the ability to portray characters in a way which evokes sympathy while still allowing them to be plausible. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, it was written well and gave a very interesting perspective on the struggles of a man suffering from a mental illness. I particularly enjoyed the narration from Jim on the mundane activities he encounters in his life.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce – review

His OCD not only prevents him from doing things that everyone else enjoys, but confines him to crippling routines in order to satisfy the demands of his condition. However, on the whole, I thought Perfect raised thought-provoking questions about gender roles in the s and the very apparent stigma attached to mental illness, even in the present day. She delves deep into the reasons mental-illness is a difficult subject to understand, while portraying Jim with dignity and raw courage. A powerful book involving some really harrowing The depiction of a depressed woman imbibing others' ideas was accurately done.

The descriptions of place are brief and beautifully written.

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A powerful book involving some really harrowing moments and also some very funny ones has left a lasting series of images. The end of the book has an epilogue and it describes her creative process and I found this fascinating. It was like painting a picture, responding to it, changing it.

When psychological processes are at arm's length you can use them creatively. He remembers how when he was twelve his mother 'walked out', and is aware that he is repeating her action. When he was sixteen his father 'showed him the door'. Later he went mad. Six miles south of Stroud he phones the hospice and is told that the stay, cure, or miracle is working. His decision to walk appears vindicated. He finds a cast-off sleeping bag and carries it with another bag, looking now every bit a gentleman of the road.

Faced with a shrunken bank balance he starts to sleep out. In Cheltenham he gives away his guidebook and posts home his debit card and other items. In the renunciation is the wonder of the impossible. Yours is the kind of story people want to hear" Before long they are joined by countless others from all walks of life.

They do not use paid accommodation, always sleeping out or finding garden sheds. There are disagreements, thefts, and soon Harold is thinking, "if only these people would go. Would find something else to believe in" He decides to backtrack, which has the effect of throwing off the fellow-travellers who proceed directly to the Berwick destination.

In the last stages of his walk Harold becomes badly disorientated, wanders around west of Berwick, sending home postcards from places like Kelso. But when he at last reaches the hospice where Queenie has been waiting, he decides not to go in, and the reader is told, by means of a confessional letter to the girl at the filling station, of another motive for the walk.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

His son David, unemployed after Cambridge and addicted to drink and drugs, committed suicide in the garden shed, where he was discovered by the father with whom he barely ever communicated, and whose life is now a protracted mourning. The same letter divulges that when he and Queenie were working as colleagues she had taken the blame for a misdemeanour committed by Harold.

Finally, Harold changes his mind and goes to the sick room to find Queenie unable to speak and at the point of death. Maureen reaches him in Berwick, and he tells her that Queenie is beyond hope, beyond speech, and had been so since he set out. He however is able to say things to Maureen that were previously unspoken, about memories of David, of their earlier life, his own mother. They are reconciled before the waves breaking on the beach.

Together they visit the hospice where Queenie has died and learned that she died at peace. When a young nun invites them to stay for evening mass they decline. Later, they head to the waterfront and reminisce on how they first met and they laugh for the first time in years. Her love has always been undeclared, and in these recounted memories she is more closely involved with David than with him. She fears that her turning on him with an accusation drives him to the overdose which finishes him. Harold arrives at the hospice and in this story they talk. She sees in the window the shining quartz pendant he brings, her letters of reminiscence have confessed her lifelong love.



The obscure sacking incident is now a rampage, unexplained and unprovoked, where Harold smashes a set of glass clowns given to boss Napier by his mother. Her story is her last confession. Now Harold, who has completed his long walk is, pathetically, briefly, all for her. Maureen is not in the picture. She dedicated the play to her father, who was dying from cancer, and who did not live long enough to hear it.