Friday, October 17, 2014

The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce – review

The author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry hits a darker but no less compelling note

Rachel Joyce
Celebration of ordinary lives … Rachel Joyce. Photograph: David Fisher/Rex Features

A nation smiled and wept over The Unlikely Pilgrimage of  Harold Fry, the charming tale of a man who, after hearing from an old friend that she is dying of cancer, is taken by a fit of magical thinking and sets off to walk across England from his home in Devon to her hospice in Northumberland, reasoning that while he is walking she will not die. No amount of wishing can turn the tide of death, yet Harold's long journey – in inadequate footwear – is a beautiful act of atonement for his failure to thank Queenie Hennessy for a favour done many years ago. Nor is one step wasted: he brings a little hope to everyone he meets, wins back the love of his wife and faces up to the death of his son. As a celebration of ordinary lives, the novel deserved its place on the 2012 Man Booker longlist.
    Now Rachel Joyce has written a companion novel, told from the point of view of the dying friend. It takes place within the same timeline as the original, with the same main characters and a similar whimsical supporting cast, yet it feels very different.

    In the first book, Harold walks away from his son's death and towards the death of his old friend, yet when that road runs out he is able to veer off into the sunset, hand in hand with his wife. In the second telling, we are dealing with Queenie's sunset – and beyond that there is only night. Trapped in her hospice bed, wandering only in her mind, her arduous pilgrimage consists of writing words. With great physical difficulty, blistering her fragile fingers as Harold is blistering his feet, she writes a letter to him that reveals two essential secrets. One is that she has been in love with Harold ever since she first laid eyes on him – a love that has carried on without end, knitting itself into the fabric of her single life. The second is that she knew his son – and knows something Harold does not about the boy's death.
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