The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry: A Novel by Rachel Joyce

JoAnn was our host on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in October.  With a nod to the mushrooms and other field greens our protagonist ate along his journey, JoAnn created a delicious salad which alone would have been filling.  However, our gracious hostess also treated us to some of her delicious homemade soup - yum!  Of course, there was also the obligatory dessert which everyone willingly devoured.

Synopsis:
Retiree Harold Fry receives a letter out of the blue from a previous co-worker with whom he has not had contact for many years.  This letter will be the catalyst for a journey which will take Harold out of his comfort zone both physically and emotionally.  What begins as a quest to save a dear friend's life will in the end actually serve as the salvation for Harold and his wife, Maureen.

Comments:
This aptly named novel began with a fitting quote from The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan:

Who would true valour see, 

Let him come hither; 

One here will constant be 

Come wind, come weather.  

There's no discouragement 

Shall make him once relent 

His first avowed intent 

To be a pilgrim.

Harold showed courage and determination in his own pilgrimage no matter the weather and the discouraging remarks of others.  His valiant effort to save Queenie resulted in him avowing to walk all the way to Berwick-upon-Tweed where she was in hospice care.  Harold was in a spiritual crisis and true to the nature of most pilgrimages, his walk became transformative and healing as he wrestled with atoning for the mistakes he had made in his life.  The use of his yacht shoes reminded the reader that this began as an unintentional journey when he first set out from his home only to mail a letter.  Along the way, the refusal to replace the yacht shoes with more sensible walking shoes became a self-imposed suffering to atone for his sins as Harold endured the blisters and painful infection in his leg.  Harold's long journey gave him time to recall memories which had long been buried in an effort to protect himself from the pain of those incidents.  However, it also gave him the opportunity to recall the good times which had been suppressed along with the bad times.

Harold met many interesting folks during his walk and with each of those characters he learned something more about human nature and in the process gleaned another nugget of truth about himself.  "He understood that in walking to atone for the mistakes he had made, it was also his journey to accept the strangeness of others.  As a passerby, he was in a place where everything, not only the land, was open.  People would feel free to talk, and he was free to listen.  To carry a little of them as he went." (p. 90 - Nook)  We were also reminded of the power of human connections, no matter how short the time spent together.  "They believed in him.  They had looked at him in his yachting shoes, and listened to what he said, and they had made a decision in their hearts and minds to ignore the evidence and to imagine something bigger and something infinitely more beautiful than the obvious." (p. 37 - Nook)

Memorable Quote:
"He had learned that it was the smallness of people that filled him with wonder and tenderness, and the loneliness of that too.  The world was made up of people putting one foot in front of the other; and a life might appear ordinary simply because the person living it had been doing so for a long time.  Harold could no longer pass a stranger without acknowledging the truth that everyone was the same, and also unique; and that this was the dilemma of being human." (p. 158 - Nook)

FAB Rating: ****1/2 (4-1/2 out of 5 stars)
The author did a wonderful job of doling out bits of relevant information along the journey so that the reader discovered the truth as Harold's repressed memories came back to him with each step.  This created unexpected twists to the story and kept the reader emotionally engaged.  This novel had many interesting characters who were true to the diversity of human nature.  Harold and Maureen were relatable and we were pleased that the ending of this story was sweet for them.  The unrealistic part of this story was where the author expected the reader to believe that an out-of-shape sixty-five year old man could manage to walk 627 miles on foot along major roadways in 87 days while stopping for visits, shopping, meals, and time off to rest and heal -- entirely in yachting shoes, no less!