Secular shelf life

THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY
By Rachel Joyce
Black Swan. 356 pages. £7.99
ISBN 978 0 552 778 091

This is an easy read by an accomplished writer.

Rachel Joyce has written radio-dramas for a number of years and it shows in her writing. She can hold her audience, create character and twist a plot.

Harold Fry and his wife Maureen are quiet people just beginning retired life when a letter arrives from a hospice. It tells Harold that a colleague of his, Queenie Hennessey, long since moved from Devon to Northumberland, has cancer. Harold sets out to post a polite letter to Queenie, but instead walks past the post box and into the countryside. He walks and walks until he reaches Berwick.

Secular salvation

Harold’s pilgrimage is not of a generic type – he is not fleeing materialism or commercialism or even middle-class complacency – instead, it is an escape from what he has become and an attempt to put the past right.

So, while this is not a modern Pilgrim’s Progress (though many reviewers have rather ignorantly gone down that path), it is still a book about secular salvation and rescue.

I began the book feeling that I’d stumbled into a rather whimsical world of stereotypes, but, as I kept on going, I was surprised, charmed and moved. The personal detail of Harold’s life, revealed slowly and carefully, engaged my sympathies and made me read on into the small hours. Through these details the nature of grief is gently explored, as is the struggle to give, receive and forgive. This is a book I will lend to non-Christian friends and family, not just because it is a good read, but also because I’d love to open a conversation about yearning and the consolation of the gospel.