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

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Maureen Fry is wonderfully complex, flinty and closed and obsessive yet full of love and concern for others as she navigates her present and her past, carrying her terrible burdens of grief and guilt. Maureen seemed short-tempered and resentful in the earlier books but has mellowed considerably. She hopes she’s better than her mother.

Maureen has settled into life after Harold’s epic journey. And finds it hard to make friends easily. Ten years later she gets a message that in Queenies Garden they have put a sculpture of her late son David. 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. But she must do this. But unlike Harold she decides to drive there. But she seems to get lost on the way as everything has changed over the years and she asks someone for directions. Which is not an easy task for her. But she eventually gets there, with Harold on the phone cheering her on. This is the 3rd installment to the companion reads " The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry" and " The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy", and centers upon the wife of Harold Fry. Maureen Fry was a complex and rather carmudgeonly figure that begged to be fleshed out among this trilogy of characters. She is also the most unlikeable, and my opinion did not change much by the end of the book. The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy tells Queenie's story of her days in hospice. Queenie knows Harold is on his way to visit her and realizes she must confront the past she left behind twenty years ago. She writes a poignant letter to Harold while he walks to deliver his letter to her. THE AUTHOR: Rachel Joyce has written over 20 original afternoon plays for BBC Radio 4, and major adaptations for both the Classic Series, Woman's Hour and also a TV drama adaptation for BBC 2. In 2007 she won the Tinniswood Award for best radio play. She moved to writing after a twenty-year career in theatre and television, performing leading roles for the RSC, the Royal National Theatre, The Royal Court, and Cheek by Jowl, winning a Time Out Best Actress award and the Sony Silver. She lives with her family in Gloucestershire. She and Harold have been happy together the last ten years, but she still has an itch to try to understand their past. As with Harold’s and Queenie’s stories, Maureen thinks about her past and how she came to be who she is. Her mother was beautiful and proud and resentful.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is where this series begins telling Harold's story of walking 600+ miles to hand deliver a letter to Queenie Hennessy who's gravely ill and spending her final days in hospice. Harold believes if he delivers his letter, Queenie will live long enough to receive it. 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. Maureen is the third book of Rachel Joyce’s Harold Fry trilogy. As such, it completes the story begun 10 years ago with The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by allowing his wife, Maureen, to venture into the world herself in search of answers or closure on problems that have been crushing her for years. She will drive, not walk, but she will also make a northward journey, encountering strangers and having no clue how to deal with them. She is not Harold. Along the way, we learn of her love for Harold but also of her biggest disappointments and her distrust of much of everything else in her life. After Harold Fry's journey, which takes place at the same time as Queenie's journey, I thought Harold's wife, Maureen, had reached her own better emotional place. She did in a way, she knew she was glad to have Harold with her even if his time is spent peacefully playing games or looking at nature with their neighbor, Rex. Maureen even went through some major steps to attempt closure concerning the suicide of their son, David, thirty years ago. But really, Maureen's brain and heart were brewing discontent, with no way that she could see to relieve it, other than sometimes erupting in anger at those around her. So sadly, I couldn't leave Harold and Maureen living happily ever after with their neighbor, Rex, because along comes the third book in the series, entitled Maureen.

I admire Rachel Joyce's writing and how she creates living, breathing characters. Readers who loved her books about Harold and Queenie will want to read this one, also. Maureen is written as a novella and is about Harold's wife. I don't believe it can be read without benefit of having read at least one of the earlier books. 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.'

I would like you to read out the directions from your phone and I will write them down on a piece of paper. I’ll take my route from that.’ ” But Maureen is not like Harold. She struggles to bond with strangers, and the landscape she crosses has changed radically. She has little sense of what she’ll find at the end of the road. All she knows is that she must get there. This was a short book and I was able to read it in a single sitting and it does not work as a stand-alone. If you’ve read the other two books you might be curious to read this one just to get some closure of some sort but other than that I cannot recommend it. A decade ago Maureen’s husband, Harold, went off on his now famous pilgrimage. Now it’s Maureen’s turn to make a journey off her own. But she isn’t like Harold, she doesn’t make friends easily and her manner can often come across as abrasive. PDF / EPUB File Name: Maureen_Fry_and_the_Angel_of_the_North__Maureen_-_Rachel_Joyce.pdf, Maureen_Fry_and_the_Angel_of_the_North__Maureen_-_Rachel_Joyce.epub