169:'The Love Song of Queenie Hennessy', five 15-minute readings on Radio 4 in October 2014, and repeated March 2016, is a sequence of letters and reminiscences from Queenie. Rachel Joyce imagines Queenie's last days as she waits for Harold. Her love has always been undeclared, and in these recounted memories she is more closely involved with David than with him. David steals and declaims her love poems written for/about Harold, steals money from Queenie, fails at Cambridge. She fears that her turning on him with an accusation drives him to the overdose which finishes him. Maureen rejects her when she comes with flowers on David's death. 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. An undertaker sees about Queenie's coffin. 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.
85:. The doctors say there is nothing more that can be done for her. He writes her a feeble and brief note and goes to post it, has second thoughts, and walks to the next post box, and the next. He phones the hospice from a call box and leaves a message. He is coming and she should wait, stay alive while he makes the journey. A girl at the petrol filling station where he stops for a snack says something that acts as a catalyst for his nascent project. He tells her he is on foot, posting a letter to someone with cancer. 'If you have faith you can do anything' she replies, but quickly disclaims any religious reference.
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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.
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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
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There are disagreements, thefts, and soon Harold is thinking, "if only these people would go. Would find something else to believe in"(220). 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
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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
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As he begins the walk—which in 87 days will cover 627 miles—he reflects. About his marriage, his former employment as a brewery representative, about his son David, from whom he is almost completely estranged. From stopping places he sends postcards, to his wife
Maureen, to Queenie, and to the
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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
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Harold also realises that his journey to
Queenie Hennesy is also a way for him to resolve issues from his past and to listen to the problems of others, such as a "silver-haired gentleman" whom he meets in a cafe early in his journey, or a middle-aged woman with cuts on her wrists.
226:, wrote that "ltimately, the success of Joyce's writing depends less on the credibility (or otherwise) of what actually happens, so much as her unerring ability to convey profound emotions in simple, unaffected language". Janet Maslin, who reviewed it for
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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. His son David, unemployed after
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she drives up to see him. She thinks of joining his pilgrimage, but when he invites her she refuses, saying "It was selfish of me to ask you to give up your walk. Forgive me, Harold", to which replies, "I’m the one who needs forgiveness" (232).
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he is joined by a young man, Mick, who remarks, "What you’re doing is a pilgrimage for the twenty-first century. It's awesome. Yours is the kind of story people want to hear" (193). Mick, it appears, works for the
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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.
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not just eating that peach, but throwing the pit out the window, rolling up his trousers and whistling to those hot mermaids". Alfred
Hickling, reviewing the novel for
193:. She dedicated the play to her father, who was dying from cancer, and who did not live long enough to hear it. The play was later developed into a full-length novel.
416:"The BFI's 10 Biggest Production Awards Of 2021: Jim Broadbent Pic 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry' & Carol Morley's 'Typist Artist Pirate King' Top List"
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140:. Before long they are joined by several others from all walks of life. They do not use paid accommodation, always sleeping out or finding garden sheds.
430:"Jim Broadbent To Star in Hit Novel Adaptation 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry' For 'Normal People' Director; Embankment Launches Sales – EFM"
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232:, called the book "sentimental" with "a premise that is simple and twee", but concludes that "it is very much a story of present-day courage".
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he gives away his guidebook and posts home his debit card and other items. In the renunciation is the wonder of the impossible.
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Maureen, although anxious about him, for a long time doesn't think of driving to provide help. Much later, when he has reached
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for New Writer of the Year for the book. It was also the best-selling hardback book in the UK from a new novelist in 2012.
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walk Harold becomes badly disorientated, wanders around west of
Berwick, sending home postcards from places like
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when he receives a letter. A colleague of twenty years ago, Queenie
Hennessy, has cancer and is in a hospice in
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Joyce first wrote the story of Harold Fry in the form of a short radio play, which was broadcast on
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260:, Doubleday, 2012. Page references in parentheses in the article text are to this edition.
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unnamed girl at the filling station who gave him inspiration for his journey.
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Rachel Joyce: My Man Booker longlisted novel was dedicated to my dying father
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misdemeanour committed by Harold. "I let her take the blame"(264).
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The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by Rachel Joyce – review
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The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce – review
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Harold Fry, 65, has cut the lawn outside his home at
361:Joyce’s ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry,’
308:Random hails 'most successful year of all time'
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276:Wakin, Daniel J. (25 July 2012). Ashanty
65:was released in the UK on 28 April 2023.
397:Quiet Man Gets a Life and Also a Blister
432:. Deadline Hollywood. 12 February 2021.
418:. Deadline Hollywood. 27 December 2021.
405:, 29 July 2012, retrieved 10 March 2014
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351:19 April 2012, retrieved 10 March 2014
333:1 August 2012, retrieved 10 March 2014
387:6 April 2012, retrieved 10 March 2014
369:25 July 2012, retrieved 10 March 2014
258:The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
35:The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
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278:Man Booker Prize Finalists Announced
196:According to Matthew Richardson in
212:compared Harold Fry's journey to "
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306:Jones, Philip (26 March 2013).
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475:Literature about pilgrimages
470:Doubleday (publisher) books
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297:, NationalBookAwards.co.uk
450:Fiction about pilgrimage
173:Background and reception
25:First UK edition (publ.
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16:Novel published in 2012
295:New Writer of the Year
77:on the south coast of
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44:2012 Man Booker Prize
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465:Novels about ageing
455:2012 British novels
366:The Washington Post
330:The Daily Telegraph
209:The Washington Post
133:Thought for the Day
107:Six miles south of
48:National Book Award
402:The New York Times
283:The New York Times
229:The New York Times
218:J. Alfred Prufrock
127:Coventry Telegraph
83:Berwick-upon-Tweed
53:A film adaptation
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69:Plot summary
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187:Anna Massey
179:BBC Radio 4
138:BBC Radio 4
75:Kingsbridge
444:Categories
264:References
236:Adaptation
114:Cheltenham
244:starring
154:Cambridge
119:South of
94:Yorkshire
57:starring
27:Doubleday
252:Footnote
121:Coventry
181:, with
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146:Kelso
79:Devon
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