I don't want to say much about the book, since so many have read and reviewed it already.Touching, endearing, realistic, emotional, good.It is one of the books on my To-Be-Read list that constantly landed on top, and I finally relented. I am not sorry at all. I took the time to venture off with Harold Fry with his letter to Queenie, felt the blisters, muscle spasms and emotional denouement as we walked 627 miles from south to north through England to deliver a letter personally. We dissected life as it happened for him until his 63rd birthday, and we found closure on many heartbreak and sorrows. And then of course, for moments as the reader, we leave Harold to return to his wife Maureen who stayed behind and had unexpectedly had to confront her own past and how she contributed to the events.It was painful and uplifting. It was dignified and respectful. But overall it was very real. A good experience.This book deserves all the attention it received.

What to say about The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry; a lovely read, a phenomenal book, exceptional and captivating. How I lingered over this book; read it slowly to truly savour and appreciate the story. The author doesn't try to impress you with pretentious words nor does she bamboozle you with a convoluted plot. It's an unembellished story. The 'hero' is not good-looking or rich; he's a simple man who embarks on the journey of a lifetime. I loved the absolute clarity of foresight into the mind and heart of a very ordinary man. Harold is an unobtrusive, tentative and unassuming person; he has been that way all his life. Now in his 60's, he is filled with regret; feels loss about situations he is no longer able to change. Since his retirement a few months prior, he has done virtually nothing but sit, much to the chagrin of his wife Maureen. Harold and Maureen's relationship has, over time, become one of simply sharing a house; rarely speaking and no longer even sharing a bed. The portrayal of their life together filled me with sorrow; two people in their 60's living together but each in a terrible aloneness. One ordinary day, he receives a letter from an old work colleague, Queenie, who is in a hospice. He sets off to post his reply but upon reaching the post box, realises that a letter is simply not enough. Queenie has been a friend, someone who stood up in defence of him; Harold feels that as Queenie had once 'saved' him, now he will save her. So he decides to walk to visit Queenie. It is indeed a pilgrimage; a walk of faith. He truly believes with all his heart and soul that his walking will save her. Each day he walks will be one day longer that she lives. I've been in Harold's position albeit with a loved one but I didn't walk; I cleaned. So I understand Harold's mission. I know just where he is coming from. The belief Harold has in his walk is infectious; as I read on, I found a little voice in my head saying in my head: 'I hope she lives, I hope she lives' . Although his walk is basically a solitary one, he has some, mostly, wonderful encounters with strangers. He feels their tenderness towards him and as he realises "he feels his own tenderness towards them. For the first time, he realises that we are all alone, just putting one foot in front of the other. But a solitary walk from one end of England to the other gives much time for retrospect. There are contemplations on his life with Maureen, painful reflections on his relationship with their son David and of course thoughts of Queenie. And, with no intent on his behalf, he becomes a minor celebrity: as he encounters people and towns, they cheer and barrack him on. This spurs him on with renewed vigour. Having said that this is a lovely read, I will add that I found the last couple of chapters a bit harrowing: the letter to The Girl at the Garage and what he finds at the hospice particularly so. The ending is bitter-sweet; but I'm glad it was. I smiled in places and I cried in others; a big lump sat in my throat for the last ten or so pages. Ultimately, Harold loses something but also finds something else that he has longed for. Rachel Joyce doesn't offer a warm, fuzzy read; your spirits will soar and they will plummet. If you're going to read anything, then read this wonderful book. Who knows, maybe we could all use a pilgrimage of our own?

Absolutely delightful - sheer reading pleasure at its very best.Harold and Maureen are a retired couple living a quiet, mundane life in Devon, where hardly anything ever happens and they hardly ever talk to each other any more, when they do its barely an exchange of words followed by Maureens usual put down "I think not"One day a letter arrives for Harold which informs him that an old work colleague Queenie is in a hospice in Berwick on Tweed. Harold pens a reply and walks out of the door to post it on the corner of the street, then decides to walk on to the next postbox - then the next until postboxes become towns and he just carries on walking deciding to deliver the letter by hand. As he walks he reminisces and we begin to realise there was something between him and Queenie, his story is gradually revealed as his walk continues and its evident that there are many things lurking beneath the surface of his and Maureens relationship.Back at home Maureen struggles to adapt to life without him, she talks to their son David and strikes up a friendship with an elderly neighbour and as days turn into weeks Harolds walk becomes a pilgrimage which stands for so much more than delivering a letter by hand.Along the way he meets many unusual characters, the misfits and the lonely and learns more about himself than he bargained on.With quirky flashes of humour, and moments of poignant tenderness the story is a little darker than I imagined it would be, although its essentially a love story it had me reduced to tears on the Arriva bus trying to pretend I had hayfever!Loved it - highly recommended!

Oh wow, and wow...a book that actually made me cry, I think that's a first. This book I so wish was chosen by my book club to read, it's so touching, so moving, so funny, so human and has one of the most powerful endings.I felt like I knew Harold personally, I cheered him on with his pilgrimage walk.This book is special, is about the human spirit, it felt so real at times it could almost be a true story, everyone should read this book. Some breathtaking paragraphs that touched me so very deeply. Wonderful book that you must read through to the end. Now I need a strong cup of tea. Dont miss this gem!!

I loved the purity and spare beauty of this sad but uplifting tale. At first I wondered how I could possibly get involved in this apparently absurd story. A retired salesman for a brewery receives a letter of goodbye from an old friend, Queenie, who is dying of cancer, and, on the way to the mailbox with a return reply, ends up setting out on a 500 mile walk to visit her. But it was a quick read and full of pleasant surprises and many special moments where the clouds of lifes travails and buried mistakes clear away for sunlit visions of redemption and truth.Part of Harolds impetus comes from a stranger at a gas station who gives him the idea that faith and positive thinking can cure cancer. The other push is that he wasnt so much walking to Queenie as away from himself. He has been shut down emotionally for a long time, with no apparent pathway to bring life back to his marriage or relieve his sense of failure over the raising of his son. I liked how his journey begins to get some flow out of the frozen river of his life:In walking, he freed the past that he had spent twenty years seeking to avoid, and now it chattered and played through his head with a wild energy that was his own. He no longer saw distance in terms of miles. He measured it with his remembering.When strangers he encounters on the way open up to him about secrets in their lives, I was bowled away by the perspectives it renders, as illustrated here: He was a chap like himself, with a unique pain; and yet there would be no knowing that if you passed him in the street, or sat opposite him in a café and didnt share his teacake. Harold pictured the gentleman on a station platform, smart in his suit, looking no different from anyone else. It must be the same all over England. People were buying milk, or filling their cars with petrol, or even posting letters. And what no one else knew was the appalling weight of the thing they were carrying inside. The inhuman effort it took sometimes to be normal, and a part of things that appeared both easy and everyday. The loneliness of that.There are a lot of hardships on Harolds journey, which often cast doubt on his new sense of purpose:Harolds mind grew limpid, and his body melted. Rain began to patter on the roof and against the tarpaulin, but it was a gentle sound, full of patience, like Maureen singing David to sleep when he was little. When the sound stopped he missed it, as of it had become part of what he knew. He felt there was no longer anything substantial between himself and the earth and the sky.Joyce seems effortlessly eloquent in capturing feelings we all have about our insignificance:His footprints, however firm, would be washed away by rain. It was as if he had never been in any of the places he had been, or met the strangers he had met. He looked behind, and already there was no trace, no sign of him anywhere.There is more to the story than Harolds walk, which would be a spoiler to reveal. A good part of the narrative deals with Maureens reaction to Harolds mission, and there is slow unfolding of the meaning Harolds relationship to Queenie, an accountant who worked at the brewery twenty years before. I was quite moved by the resolution of the tale. I compare the experience of this read with the revelations of the power of secret grief in Hardings Tinkers. I also find a nice parallel of outward and inward journeys as portrayed on a grander scale in Matthiessens The Snow Leopard. Others have pointed out a similarity in form of Harolds walk with the running spree of Forrest Gump as an outlet for his inability to digest a tragedy in his life. Despite these similarities, Joyces rendering of the sweetness and sadness of Harolds story stands out for me as brilliant and fresh.