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Wednesday, 28 May 2014

043. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (2012).




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.
  

P
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…..


V
          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.