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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In this slender, lyrical novel, Rachel Joyce offers a story as epic and encompassing as that wide-armed angel of the North. A journey of redemption, forgiveness and love. A journey you don't want to miss. Helen Paris, author of Lost Property But her snob trigger is still pretty sensitive. She stops to see one of Harold’s trek friends, hoping for a relaxing welcome. When Harold gets a note from one of the new friends he made along his way which says she read that Queenie had made a garden with “a monument to your son”, Maureen knows she wants to see it. Harold tells her she must go. She must, to see what this garden has to do with David.

Anyway I did not enjoy this third book as much as the previous two. Maureen has never been a very likeable character and most of the time I wonder how Harold puts up with her. On the other hand I was sometimes in sympathy with her when I was maybe not supposed to be. Kate's awful motor home would have put me off too.Rachel Joyce is deeply attuned to the complex rhythms of life and love and she sublimates this understanding, sentence by delicate, powerful, glistening sentence into an unforgettable story. It’s beautiful all through, but the closing chapters are just astonishing, transcendent and hope-filled and life-affirming. I’ll never forget this wonderful novel or the sunny, slightly teary day I spent reading it.’ Donal Ryan 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. DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Random House UK, Transworld Publishers, Doubleday for providing a digital ARC of Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North by Rachel Joyce for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

Set during the pandemic, although that is not the prevalent theme, it is a time when solitude is perhaps even more the norm, it seems the perfect time for Maureen to face the loss that has framed these last years. And so she goes on a journey to say goodbye. Life-affirming. If you loved The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, make time to read this finale to the trilogy ... A touching tale about heartbreak and healing. Good Housekeeping The main difference in this book from the other two is the length. This is a novella and although I thoroughly enjoyed this read, it did feel noticeably short. I wanted as much of Maureen as the author wrote of both Harold and Queenie. With that said, what was written about Maureen was both revealing and satisfying.

The book launches where Maureen is embarking on a pilgrimage of her own, with the blessing and urging of her husband Harold. I don't want to elaborate on the details as the reader needs to discover this along with Maureen on their own. Along the way she is as forthright and unpleasant as ever, but learns some lessons along the way. This was a poignant, lovely read, filled with compassion, a story of both growth and healing with a perfect ending. This is a fitting and deeply moving end to the trilogy of Harold Fry. A portrait of a woman adrift in grief, it is as fragile as a songbird and just as beautiful. Sarah Winman

This story continues the story of Harold Fry, with the main character in this his wife Maureen. It is through Maureen we learn more of her story, but also more of their story. Their loss, the grief that follows, as well as a realization that, perhaps it is time that she faces her grief, and so Maureen is the one who takes a journey - although not on foot as Harold had done. This book was beautifully written, as are all the books in this series. I think it would be most helpful to read the other two books in the series before reading this one, as the context is important to the story. 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 FellBut a FEW books, stay in our hearts, and become the ones you recommend over and over again, no matter how many years have passed. That had been the case with the first two books in this series: “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry” and (especially) “The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy”. I wasn’t sure I wanted to read about Maureen, but I think the author did a good job of rounding out the three stories while still leaving some things to our imagination. The Porter and the Three Ladies by Rachel Joyce: It is time for Shahrazad to tell another tale to save her life. In this story within a story, we find out that if Joe doesn't find the exclusive to satisfy his ruthless editor, he will lose his job. He finds three beautiful women in Damascus but what is the truth behind their secret life? I understand what the author was trying to do giving Maureen a voice to her grief at the loss of her son. While Harold walked during his journey Maureen chooses to drive and we are subjected to a lot of internal dialogue and not much interaction with others and what we do get is complaints and whining. I think that’s the biggest difference between these stories. Maureen Fry is an emotionally damaged woman who is grieving for David, her son who died many years earlier. The third book of the Harold Fry trilogy revolves around Maureen, Harold's wife. The trilogy started when Harold went on a pilgrimage to visit his friend, Queenie, in a hospice. Years earlier, Queenie had made a memorial garden by the sea using found objects washed up by the ocean in combination with greenery and flowers. One part of the garden was dedicated to David Fry because Queenie regretted that she was unable to help the young man who committed suicide.