The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry Book Review

Title: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Author: Rachel Joyce
Type: Fiction
Published: 2012
Pages: 356
TW: Death, Cancer, Suicide, Death of a Child, Misogyny, Sexual Harassment

“I miss her all the time. I know in my head that she has gone. The only difference is that I am getting used to the pain. It’s like discovering a great hole in the ground. To begin with, you forget it’s there and keep falling in. After a while, it’s still there, but you learn to walk round it.” 

Harold Fry retired 6 months ago. He has his routine with his wife Maureen, and every day is very similar. That is, until he receives a letter telling him that his old friend Queenie has cancer and is about to die. Shocked by the news, and after a brief encounter with a lady at a petrol station, Harold does the only sane thing and begins a pilgrimage from his house in Cornwall to where Queenie is in Scotland (a whopping 627 miles).

I need to get a gripe out the way before I start this review properly but can authors stop writing stories about old people and then only have them in the mid-60s… that’s not old! It was the same with A Man Called Ove and I just don’t understand it!!

Anyway, now on to the actual book… I read Perfect by Rachel Joyce years ago and really enjoyed it so I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to get to this. Harold is a typical grumpy old man, and probably one that has characteristics everyone can recognise in people they know. He’s set in his ways and him and Maureen live a very quiet life until he decides to upend it with his pilgrimage.

I think Harold and Maureen’s relationship was probably my favourite part of this book because it was so deeply complex. They talk a lot about their son David and quibble with each other like you expect any old married couple to – while they seem frosty on the outside it doesn’t take long to realise how much you like them.

There are many layers to this book and a lot of them unexpected. It shows the kindness (and hesitation) of strangers as well as give us a glimpse into a friendship that affected Harold’s life in unthinkable ways. I didn’t love everything about this book, but I did love how it stored my faith in humanity just a little bit.

You do have to suspend your disbelief a little at quite how Harold managed to walk that far… but I won’t dwell on that too much!

A fun and unexpected read, I enjoyed the story overall. I don’t think I was gripped until towards the end but it was a story that certainly stayed with me for a while after I finished it and there’s something to be said for that!