Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North: From the bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Harold Fry, 3)

Product Information

A few years have passed since Harold’s trek to see Queenie at the hospice, and since we heard Queenie’s story before she passed. This is touching, emotional, moving and sad as Maureen assesses herself, learns a lot and find the peace she craves in one really beautiful scene. She finds kindness and understanding in places she least expects it and the whole experience is heartwarming.

She’s off to see Queenie’s garden where there are tributes left for people… one of them in her garden is left there for Harold and Maureen’s son David who died by suicide.I read A LOT of books, so a few weeks after I finish one, I am often forgetting the details of story. Maureen is a woman, tough on the outside, but tender and fragile within. Through her husband's, Harold's journey, Maureen feels that she must go on her own journey ten years after Harold's famous walk. She leaves taking the car and along the way we are listening to her thoughts, the difficulties of her life, her failure she feels as a student, and mother. At least he was happy, at least he was safe. And his health, too. At least he had that. It wasn’t that he was losing his mind, rather that he was deliberately taking things out of it that he no longer needed.” Poor Maureen. She just never figured out exactly how to deal with the world. Unlike her husband Harold, she can't open herself up to friendship because she's too suspicious. Unlike his friend Queenie, she can't find joy in the midst of tragedy. The suicide of her son 30 years ago has left her angry and withdrawn.

Maureen Fry has settled into the quiet life she now shares with her husband Harold after his iconic walk across England. Now, ten years later, an unexpected message from the North disturbs her equilibrium again, and this time it is Maureen’s turn to make her own journey. The fact was she’d had the satnav disconnected. She couldn’t bear that nice voice urging directions at her and telling her last minute that she’d missed the turn. Maureen was of the generation who had grown up with the phone on the hall table, and a map in the glove compartment. Even online shopping was a stretch. Twenty lemons instead of two, and all that kind of thing.

The last of the Harold Fry trilogy, this time featuring Maureen, Harold's wife. She hears about Queenie's garden in Embleton Bay and that her son David is in it, so she makes a pilgrimage of her own to see it, to find him in it. This fascinating compendium traces phobias and manias through their rich social, cultural and medical history. We learn that in the US, a third of all people with phobias suffer from a terror of cats (ailurophobia) or dogs (cynophobia). As well as well-known behaviours, Summerscale highlights less obvious fears such as hippophobia (fear of horses, made famous in Freud’s “Little Hans” case study) and coulrophobia (a morbid fear of clowns). The Fell But her snob trigger is still pretty sensitive. She stops to see one of Harold’s trek friends, hoping for a relaxing welcome. Reduced by physical injury, Maureen has to accept the kindness and care Kate unstintingly gives. Captive in her disability, she connects with sweet little Maple, Kate’s granddaughter, and eventually, finally, Maureen comes to terms with her grief over David. I loved both The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy from this series but the final one left me feeling very disappointed. I couldn’t connect to the main character, Maureen, at all and frankly, I was quite bored sometimes while reading this one. It was very repetitive in the fact that Maureen whines and complains and gets angry over and over again. Rachel Joyce usually writes about the ordinary in an extraordinary way but this one just fell flat.