|
The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £2.00
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £2.00, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
Tender and funny, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry shows that even our frailties can be uplifting and redemptive. --Edward Stourton
Harold Fry is infuriating, hilarious and completely out of his depth, but I held my breath at his every blister and cramp and, felt, as if by turning the pages, I might help his impossible quest succeed. Marvellous! --Helen Simonson, author of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
A terrific debut. --the Bookseller, December 2, 2011
A wonderful book ... Full of sadness, hope, and ultimately love. I found it very moving. --Esther Freud
From the moment I met Harold Fry, I didn't want to leave him. Impossible to put down. --Erica Wagner, The Times
A magical, moving and uplifting tale about a man's journey across Britain and into his own heart. --Deborah Moggach
Really enjoyable ... by turns moving, charming and very funny.
--Hugh Dennis
I loved this book. I loved its purity, its brutality and unerring honesty. I don't think I have read such richly composed metaphors before. They are like shooting stars glittering across each page. I can't believe this is her first novel- I wait with bated breath for her next. --Natascha McElhone
A delightfully original and engaging debut. --Rebecca Frayn
The odyssey of a simple man, original, subtle and touching. --Claire Tomalin
This book is like a naive painting: simple and profound. It is a moving story , full of heart, laced through with wry wit. I loved Harold and Maureen and their separate journeys. It felt like a celebration of being alive, being human. Beautiful!
--Niamh Cusack
Harold Fry is infuriating, hilarious and completely out of his depth, but I held my breath at his every blister and cramp and, felt, as if by turning the pages, I might help his impossible quest succeed. Marvellous! --Helen Simonson, author of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
A terrific debut. --the Bookseller, December 2, 2011
A wonderful book ... Full of sadness, hope, and ultimately love. I found it very moving. --Esther Freud
From the moment I met Harold Fry, I didn't want to leave him. Impossible to put down. --Erica Wagner, The Times
A magical, moving and uplifting tale about a man's journey across Britain and into his own heart. --Deborah Moggach
Really enjoyable ... by turns moving, charming and very funny.
--Hugh Dennis
I loved this book. I loved its purity, its brutality and unerring honesty. I don't think I have read such richly composed metaphors before. They are like shooting stars glittering across each page. I can't believe this is her first novel- I wait with bated breath for her next. --Natascha McElhone
A delightfully original and engaging debut. --Rebecca Frayn
The odyssey of a simple man, original, subtle and touching. --Claire Tomalin
This book is like a naive painting: simple and profound. It is a moving story , full of heart, laced through with wry wit. I loved Harold and Maureen and their separate journeys. It felt like a celebration of being alive, being human. Beautiful!
--Niamh Cusack
"Not just a book I enjoyed reading, but a book I feel lucky to have read. Harold Fry is a hero for us all. To go on this journey with him will not only break your heart, it might also just heal it."
- --Tiffany Baker, New York Times bestselling author of The Little Giant of Aberdeen County
Late last year the time came to pick 2012's `new face' for books: I read a pile of first novels and enjoyed a few, but there was only one I adored, and that was The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry...
It is a funny book, a wise book, a charming book - but never cloying. It's a book with a savage twist, - and yet never seems manipulative. Perhaps because Harold himself is just wonderful...
This book may follow a pattern set by another radio dramatist-turned-novelist, David Nicholls, whose One Day has now sold more than a million copies and been made into a successful film simply because one reader said to another `I love this book' over and over again. So I'm telling you now: I love this book. --Erica Wagner, The Times
Life-affirming delight. A comic pleasure. --Woman and Home
15 A tender, funny debut about second chances and regained love as a man takes to the road on an unusual quest. --Marie Claire
Distinguished by remarkable confidence... Polished to perfection...Joyce's experience as a playwright shows in her ear for dialogue and eye for character diatom - even the walk-on parts stay with you as real people. She handles her material with deceptive lightness but Harold's journey towards a better version of himself is totemic. To read about him is to be moved to follow him.
--Telegraph, March 10, 2012
Review
Advance praise for "The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry"
"Oh, to be a pilgrim in yachting shoes and waxed cotton jacket, fueled only by a sudden burning need to save a dying friend. Harold Fry is infuriating, hilarious, and completely out of his depth, but I held my breath at his every blister and cramp and felt, as if by turning the pages, that I might help his impossible quest succeed. Marvelous!"--Helen Simonson, author of "Major Pettigrew's Last Stand"
"The odyssey of a simple man . . . original, subtle, and touching."--Claire Tomalin, author of "Charles Dickens: A Life" --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
"Oh, to be a pilgrim in yachting shoes and waxed cotton jacket, fueled only by a sudden burning need to save a dying friend. Harold Fry is infuriating, hilarious, and completely out of his depth, but I held my breath at his every blister and cramp and felt, as if by turning the pages, that I might help his impossible quest succeed. Marvelous!"--Helen Simonson, author of "Major Pettigrew's Last Stand"
"The odyssey of a simple man . . . original, subtle, and touching."--Claire Tomalin, author of "Charles Dickens: A Life" --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
70 of 72 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Be prepared to confront your personal demons when you read this book. For the mature reader in particular, I challenge you not to find something in this novel to make you at the least uneasy. It is ultimately an uplifting story, but along the way there is a great deal of pain and for many there will be uncomfortable home truths about things that we could have handled better, regrets about slipping into complacency and about the loss of passion. There is the terrible pain caused by the loss of a child; the guilt engendered by failure to appreciate and help a friend; the estrangement of a once-loving couple - and the knowledge that many of these things cannot be put right however much you want to.
Harold's walk is the vehicle for exploring these ideas and more. A very ordinary and unassuming man, not in any sense a hero, Harold's whim to walk to Berwick on Tweed to see a dying friend and by so doing to save her from cancer, provides the author with the opportunity to weave in the stories of many other people who, in the words of Henry David Thoreau, are living "lives of quiet desperation". The people he meets on his journey are often kind and generous but many are battling their own demons. At one point the simple pilgrimage that Harold has unwittingly created clashes with our modern world of celebrity - represented by the PR men and tabloid journalists - and you pray for Harold to escape all this and revert to his simple goal.
In the end Harold and his wife Maureen - a somewhat stereotypical middle-aged woman with net curtains and a clipped way of speaking that discourages anything unconventional - do find resolution and redemption. To say more would spoil the story. Do read it - it will make you laugh and cry but it will not leave you untouched.
Harold's walk is the vehicle for exploring these ideas and more. A very ordinary and unassuming man, not in any sense a hero, Harold's whim to walk to Berwick on Tweed to see a dying friend and by so doing to save her from cancer, provides the author with the opportunity to weave in the stories of many other people who, in the words of Henry David Thoreau, are living "lives of quiet desperation". The people he meets on his journey are often kind and generous but many are battling their own demons. At one point the simple pilgrimage that Harold has unwittingly created clashes with our modern world of celebrity - represented by the PR men and tabloid journalists - and you pray for Harold to escape all this and revert to his simple goal.
In the end Harold and his wife Maureen - a somewhat stereotypical middle-aged woman with net curtains and a clipped way of speaking that discourages anything unconventional - do find resolution and redemption. To say more would spoil the story. Do read it - it will make you laugh and cry but it will not leave you untouched.
34 of 36 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
I think this amazing debut novel could be as successful in 2012 as David Nicholls' One Day was in 2011. I don't mean that they are similar novels but they both offer that same blend of humour, wisdom and heart tugging pathos. And yet for about 50 pages I wasn't sure. Harold had set off on his journey and I started to wonder whether he was just a bit simple minded and unlikely to be an interesting companion over 300 pages. How wrong I was ! By the end I was in tears.
This is a story that develops in unexpected ways. It is by no means just the simple and charming tale that you may expect. Rachel Joyce starts by writing about her characters in a stripped down way that makes them very ordinary indeed. It appears that there are no heroes here. Just very ordinary people who on the whole fail to deal very well with life's tough knocks. And from this unpromising beginning she slowly start to weave her magic.
So what is it about ? Well, everything really, the whole of life. Its certainly about what love can achieve and its most definitely about what a lack of love can achieve. Its also about faith but not faith as you know it. This is not a story where anyone has any blazing convictions or sudden revelations. This is the sort of faith which starts off in misguided ways, humans stumbling along (literally in Harold's case) in a generally confused way and from this mixture of good and daft intentions a small light may start to flicker. And did I say that Ms Joyce writes like a dream? Well she does. How on earth can you produce a first book that is this well written ?
But my tip to would-be readers is to try and avoid too many reviews. As I said earlier this is a story that unfolds in unexpected ways and the last thing you want is learn anything too soon. Not only is the author a great writer but she doesn't put a foot wrong in the pacing and structure of her story. Just buy it. Just read it !
This is a story that develops in unexpected ways. It is by no means just the simple and charming tale that you may expect. Rachel Joyce starts by writing about her characters in a stripped down way that makes them very ordinary indeed. It appears that there are no heroes here. Just very ordinary people who on the whole fail to deal very well with life's tough knocks. And from this unpromising beginning she slowly start to weave her magic.
So what is it about ? Well, everything really, the whole of life. Its certainly about what love can achieve and its most definitely about what a lack of love can achieve. Its also about faith but not faith as you know it. This is not a story where anyone has any blazing convictions or sudden revelations. This is the sort of faith which starts off in misguided ways, humans stumbling along (literally in Harold's case) in a generally confused way and from this mixture of good and daft intentions a small light may start to flicker. And did I say that Ms Joyce writes like a dream? Well she does. How on earth can you produce a first book that is this well written ?
But my tip to would-be readers is to try and avoid too many reviews. As I said earlier this is a story that unfolds in unexpected ways and the last thing you want is learn anything too soon. Not only is the author a great writer but she doesn't put a foot wrong in the pacing and structure of her story. Just buy it. Just read it !
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
This is a delightful, poignant tale of a retired couple, Harold and Maureen, living out their days in Devon, when something happens that will change their future. And it is such a small occurrence on the face of it - a letter arrives for Harold from a former colleague of his at the brewery, Queenie Hennessy. Harold writes a reply, and he sets off down the road to post it. But then he continues walking. And carries on walking, and it becomes his purpose to get to Queenie, to save her, all the hundreds of miles away up in a Hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed, on foot, in just his yachting shoes.
Beautifully understated, the story plays out so well, there is sadness, some very touching moments, and there is some very well-observed gentle humour too. For Harold, and for Maureen, there is the time and space to take stock and think about their lives together, their son David, and about the events in the past that have brought them to where they are now. Can things be different for them; can they heal the divide that has grown? The reader is not party to the full story until close to the end of the novel. So we can only guess at the reason behind Harold's determination, whatever the odds, to get to Queenie, though we know it's not romantic love.
There is hope despite the difficult times. There is some lovely prose as Harold recognises and admires the nature all around him. His journey becomes more than just one that concerns himself and Queenie; it grows to involve the people he meets on his way, such a variety, by and large he is enriched by his encounters and buoyed by them. He is taken into strangers' confidences, and realises that so many people, despite appearances, have this inner torment that they carry with them. There are beautiful, simple but striking insights into humans, made through Harold.
This is a gentle, touching and rewarding tale, and what a promising, engaging first novel; it's a real accomplishment. I feel sure very many readers will enjoy this.
Beautifully understated, the story plays out so well, there is sadness, some very touching moments, and there is some very well-observed gentle humour too. For Harold, and for Maureen, there is the time and space to take stock and think about their lives together, their son David, and about the events in the past that have brought them to where they are now. Can things be different for them; can they heal the divide that has grown? The reader is not party to the full story until close to the end of the novel. So we can only guess at the reason behind Harold's determination, whatever the odds, to get to Queenie, though we know it's not romantic love.
There is hope despite the difficult times. There is some lovely prose as Harold recognises and admires the nature all around him. His journey becomes more than just one that concerns himself and Queenie; it grows to involve the people he meets on his way, such a variety, by and large he is enriched by his encounters and buoyed by them. He is taken into strangers' confidences, and realises that so many people, despite appearances, have this inner torment that they carry with them. There are beautiful, simple but striking insights into humans, made through Harold.
This is a gentle, touching and rewarding tale, and what a promising, engaging first novel; it's a real accomplishment. I feel sure very many readers will enjoy this.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
I really enjoyed this book. I found that it was hard to put down. Great cant wait for the authors next one.
Published 13 hours ago by Roger Wall
Read it nursing blisters!
I chose this book from a review in a national newspaper and am glad I that I did. If anyone has ever walked/hiked through the pains of blisters and burning soles, they can... Read more
Published 4 days ago by Shaz
The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold fry
A thoroughly enjoyable read. I looked forward to following Harold fry on his pilgrimage. Well written i genuinely felt as though I was on the journey. Sad when I finished the book
Published 5 days ago by Jenjent
charming and engaging
I picked up this book last night at the 50% mark on my kindle, I ended up staying half the night to finish it, such an engaging and charming book, with a message which resonates... Read more
Published 8 days ago by Lena Glenholmes
A truly lovely story
What a truly lovely story. The lives of Mr and Mrs Fry unfold through this beautifully written novel. You grow to love them both and begin to understand why they are who they are. Read more
Published 10 days ago by Queenie18
Couldn't put it down.
Saw this book in a well known book store at over twice the price I bought it from Amazon. Started to read as soon as it arrived. Read more
Published 14 days ago by Karin Green
I have never enjoyed a book more
I need not reiterate the story of this book as other reviewers have already ably done so. I can only say that I have never enjoyed a book more. Read more
Published 14 days ago by Jellbones
Entertaining Mr Fry
Recommended by a friend this book did not disappoint. I was on Mr Fry's wavelength after the first chapter and felt I had been on the rollercoaster ride with him. Read more
Published 15 days ago by happypenguin
Thought provoking read
Really enjoyed this book. Descriptive journey bringing in sentiment and love. Would recommend as gentle read. Characters believable and easy to like. Some humour too.
Published 16 days ago by Lolly
A Wonderful Book full of surprises
Rachel Joyce has written a wonderful debut novel and I eagerly await her second. An award winning playwright, she has written for radio and TV and now, thank goodness, a novel. Read more
Published 17 days ago by Mrs. S. A. Blane
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
