Quiet Man Gets a Life and Also a Blister

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by Rachel Joyce

By JANET MASLIN
Published: July 29, 2012

At first glance Harold Fry is a sad, lonely English milquetoast, the human
equivalent of a potted geranium. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel
Joyces first novel, contrives a way to shake him out of his monotonous life and
send him on a voyage of self-discovery. Harold will learn that there is more to life
than mowing ones lawn. Readers will learn that one mans quiet timidity should
not be taken at face value. Potted geraniums have feelings too.

Patricia Wall/The New York Times

Ms. Joyces novel, a sentimental nominee for this years Man Booker Prize, has a
premise that is simple and twee. One day Harold receives a letter from an old
acquaintance, Queenie Hennessy. Queenie is dying at a hospice that is 627 miles
north of Harolds home near the English Channel. When Harold reads the letter, he
responds with a tearful I um. Gosh. Then he writes her a postcard and walks down
his road to mail it. Then he keeps on going.
Harold (whose story was in part inspired by the terminal illness of Ms. Joyces
father) will walk the entire length of England in hope of keeping Queenie alive. Its
hard to say whether this is more surprising to Harold or to his wife, Maureen.
Harold and Maureens marriage went stale a long time ago, to the point where
Harold thinks of her as a wall that you expected to be there, even if you didnt often
look at it. When Harold leaves home, Maureen is hurt enough to suggest that the
estrangement was Queenie related. In a book that sometimes misleads and
manipulates its readers, Ms. Joyce coyly feeds that jealousy flame.
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is not just a book about lost love. It is
about all the wonderful everyday things Harold discovers through the mere process
of putting one foot in front of the other. The world was made up of people putting
one foot in front of the other, Ms. Joyce writes, in one of many, many iterations of
this same thought, and a life might appear ordinary simply because the person
living it had been doing so for a long time.

Harold finds out that there is fresh air, scenic vistas and an open sky outside the
confines of his unhappy home. He finds out that the little things in life matter. He
finds that he is stronger than he realized, even if the book devotes more than
enough attention to a weeping blister that develops as he walks. Twee alert: He
makes the whole trek while wearing yachting shoes.
As he travels, Harold begins to marvel at how much he has been missing. He
dredges up painful old memories: about his and Maureens son, David, who speaks
to his mother but not his father; about Harolds own mother, who abandoned him;
about the sweetness of Queenie and the way Harold betrayed her trust. The
sweetness of Queenie is, like many minor details in this novel, truly literal. When
they worked at the same brewery, Harold as a sales rep and Queenie as a
bookkeeper, she carried candy in her handbag just for him. There was a Mars bar
that he still remembers with affection.
Ms. Joyce has been an actress and written many radio plays. That background is
apparent in the way her story is structured. As Harold progresses northward, he
encounters a series of colorful walk-on characters, each of whom gets a scene or
two. In the books sole nod to satire Harold attracts the press and then acquires a
group of followers who think of themselves fellow pilgrims. Some of them wear
Pilgrim T-shirts. One wears a gorilla suit. The march gets a Facebook page. Yes, if
you look for Harold Fry on Twitter you will find him.
These publicity-seeking pilgrims who are marching to save Queenie squabble about
tactics. They talk about staying on message. Eventually they decide that Harold is a
hindrance. So they leave him behind. He is delighted to be rid of them.
Through the cumulative effect of all these lukewarm adventures Harold begins to
feel like a new man. He rediscovers his long-buried need for Maureen, and the
amorous feelings are mutual; soon each is remembering what it was to be young
and in love. They ultimately come to understand that after 47 years together they
love each other in a newly deep till-death-do-us-part way.
The end of this book is much more powerful than the rest. Once the mortally ill
Queenie becomes a person and not just an abstraction, death and fear become part
of the story. Although Ms. Joyce does build one climactic event around the
smashing of glass clown figurines, she gives her story unexpected seriousness as
Harold reaches the hospice he has gone to find. Yet the sad, grotesque aspects of
these final scenes are balanced by a sense of the miraculous that seems credible and
hard won.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry takes its opening epigraph from John
Bunyans Pilgrims Progress. It takes the stirring spirituality of its ending from
Bunyan too. In between Ms. Joyces book loosely parallels The Pilgrims Progress
at times, but it is very much a story of present-day courage. She writes about how
easily a mousy, domesticated man can get lost and how joyously he can be refound.
A version of this review appears in print on July 30, 2012, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline:
Quiet Man Gets a Life And Also A Blister.