Rachel Joyce gives us readers the opportunity to not only get to know her as a person but to understand her motivations and in doing so enriches the story that began with Harold Fry’s 600+ mile walk. It's beautiful all through, but the closing chapters are just astonishing, transcendent and hope-filled and life-affirming. Maureen Fry And The Angel Of The North is the third book in the Harold Fry trilogy by British actress, radio playwright and author, Rachel Joyce. Although the author does a good job of filling in some background, this won’t have nearly the impact without having watched the earlier stories unfold. As she drives up to Embleton Bay, we are privy to Maureen’s memories of her childhood and her private thoughts on Harold and the events from ten years ago, their marriage, Queenie, and her memories of her son David who has been gone thirty years.

I do enjoy the way Joyce uses the natural world in this novel (and in her others) as it almost feels like another background character at times. A complex woman trying to make a reasoning out of the death of her son thirty years ago and just discovering herself is the theme of this tale. You realize how lost she is from herself, how out of control she feels in her life, and how different she feels from Harold and everyone else. She moved to writing after a long career as an actor, performing leading roles for the RSC, the National Theatre and Cheek by Jowl.

She misses him terribly and decides to make the journey up north to see this garden for herself, even though this is a challenge for her. I don't think this book could flourish as a standalone without its two full-bodied predecessors propping it up.

To read her work is to think at first you are being invited to a perfect and delicious afternoon tea - then realise that you are intimate communion with what it means to be human: to suffer, to love, and to be understood. Hers is a very different quest from Harold’s, and her private nature makes it hard for her to ask for or accept help.Maureen has never forgiven herself that she did not see how deeply troubled David was before he took his own life. She is a somewhat spiky cactus, she finds friendship hard, she takes offence all too easily and has the ability to say completely the wrong thing. My favourite quote: 'It wasn't that he was losing his mind, rather that he was deliberately taking things out of it that he no longer needed.