The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (2012).
A supposedly feel good story for
all ages.
However….
The problems that I have are:
1.
the story is maybe
too familiar?
2.
the ending is too
unrelated to the storyline?
3.
I actually feel
depressed at the end instead of the other way around?
4.
I have got the
impression that this writer might be trying too hard?
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me,
cold-heart bastard.
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layers. –Harold Fry. 64years
old retired brewery worker.
After a
bitter childhood with lots of traumas, Harold decides to become practically
nobody. So he tries really hard to stay away from any kind of attention and
relationship and because he is really so good at avoiding confrontation, he successfully
becomes just one of those guys that you glance but never see. He is there but
not there because nobody pays any attention to him just like the way Harold
wants it. He will make a great ninja master. A total loser.
However, for
some unconvincing reason, Harold finds a decent girl, marries her and have a
brilliant but depressed kid named David.
Of course,
the relationship deteriorates as soon as his son starts speaking and discovering
the wall in his dad’s mind and from there, Harold naturally isolates himself
even from his own family.
And now, he
starts walking to regain his identity, I think. I am not quite sure about this
because Harold himself has no idea what he is doing.
He has
nothing but regrets for his life, has only few good memories about his
childhood and his child, David and whenever the memories comes back at him, he
cries a lot. A really depressing man to be around.
An old and
retired FORREST GUMP but probably even less smarter.
Maureen. Harold’s wife.
Meticulous woman with absolutely no emotion. She keeps following the same
routines to kill time everyday. She and Harold just lives together because, I
think, they are just used to each other’s presence. Nothing more.
Queenie Hennessy. Harold’s
old co-worker who gets fired shortly after she gets the job in Brewery.
Her
letter which explains that she has a terminal cancer and only has short time to
live triggers something in Harold and forces him to start a “pilgrimage”.
Harold meets lots of different people on his journey
to the hospice in
Berwick-upon Tweed
where Queenie stays. And those strangers are often charming, interesting and have
stories to tell and they are the only things that holds this novel together, I
think.
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lace. – It stars
from a small and peaceful English village called King’s Bridge. Then it ends with
Berwick-upon-Tweed where Queenie stays. The distance is over 600 miles.
The
journey takes over two months and Harold and his followers stay outside with
sleeping bag and sometime, tents. They are eating whatever possible that they
can get their hands on: wild berry, donation or some charity foods.
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lot. –It goes
like this. Harold receives a letter from his old and long forgotten friend
Queenie. It says in the letter that she is dying with terminal cancer. Harold
writes a letter back to Queenie with all the cliché and no substances. On his
way to deliver the mail to the post office, he stops at the gas station. There
he meets a girl who basically gives him an idea of what he is supposed to do.
“Don’t wait. Go for it”. So he calls the hospital where Queenie stays and tell
them to wait for him and starts walking with Yachting shoes and regular clothes
to deliver the letter by himself. His reasoning being that as long as he walks,
Queenie stays alive waiting for him.
During the
long 87 days journey, he meets quite a few nice and weird people who provide us
interesting sub plots and occasional smile. The rest are Harold’s back story
and history. Apparently, vast stretch of hills and road trigger Harold’s memory
and whenever he remembers something from his childhood or marriage or work, he
cries because there are nothing but regret in his life. Years of doing nothing
and caring no one comes back and haunts him down like that three ghosts do for Scrooge.
What a miserable old man he is.
About half
way through the journey, a media inevitably catches up with him, and bunch of
people join his pilgrimage and he becomes a minor celebrity.
Later on,
after the pilgrims dissolves into several group due to different opinion and
greed, Harold quietly moves away from them and continues his travel by himself.
And the
ending. Well, let’s just say I don’t like people who look at other people’s
misery and say “I’m not happy but better than that person, so let’s move on”. It’s
not exactly like that, but that is what crosses my mind when I finished this book.
There should
be, what with all the emotional buildups over hundreds of pages, a
confrontation of life time following the final meeting between Harold and
Queenie.
But the writer avoids all of that by just simply taking the main
character out of context completely. I guess you can call it a surprise ending
because it really is, but not the right surprise that suits this storyline.
Sigh…..
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erdict. Even if all
the negative things I said, this book is not that bad. Not exciting, nor
interesting but not that bad. It’s one of these books/films that spend too much
time build up the huge tension, when it comes time to close up the shop, there
just is no possible way to wrap up the entire story with proper ending.
On top of
that, the writer makes it much worse by choosing the most unexpected and unrelated
way to end the story. It’s like spending all day
inflating a huge balloon, only to explode it by accident at the end of
the long day before releasing it to sky.
That’s it? is what I said at the end.
Give me back my 5 days!
So
it’s B plus at the beginning, B and B minus in the middle then D minus or F at
the end. And I’ve been really generous. Especially, the ending.
If
you like this kind of feel-good, it's never too-late!, a meaning of life kind of book, I
recommend you a book called “This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M.Holmes”. It's better, funnier and a lot more interesting.
After Holmes’ book, if you still have time, then maybe this book.
