Like Harold, Maureen meets people on her winter journey who surprise her in positive and darker ways. There are some ‘chuckle out loud’ moments such as the scene with the assistant in a diner. The depth of Joyce’s understanding of human nature, the poetically simple language and the parallel rather than sequential storytelling reminds me of Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy Barton novels. This book tells of Maureen’s quest, to find herself.ĭeeply emotional and simply written, this is about the longevity of grief and how it can permeate every minute of your day. Until she met Harold, she felt as if she were ‘being measured against something she didn’t understand and would never get right.’ Always lacking in self-confidence, Maureen struggled first after the death of their son David and later to accept Harold’s quest to see Queenie one last time. Not always a sympathetic character, Maureen has always felt different. Maureen has a minor presence in the first two novels, so this is her painfully supressed story about unbearable grief. It is ten years since Maureen Fry’s husband Harold returned home from his walking adventure in search of old friend, Queenie. It supplies the missing piece in the jigsaw, that hole in the middle.

It’s as delightfully funny and painfully sad as The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, and neatly completes the Fry story.

This novella can standalone but you will miss many references. If you haven’t read the two previous books in this trilogy, please don’t start Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North by Rachel Joyce until you have.

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