The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce starts with a wonderfully simple idea. Harold Fry, resident of 13 Fossebridge Road, gets a letter from an old friend, Queenie Hennessy, saying she is dying of cancer. He drafts a reply and goes out to post it. He reaches the post box and, instead of slotting it in, decides to walk to the next one. And the next one after that. Before long, he concludes that a letter is not enough.
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He will have to walk to Queenie Hennessy himself. Only one snag: the journey from Kingsbridge to Berwick-upon-Tweed is 627 miles.
So starts the tale of a modern pilgrim. The epigraph of the novel comes from John Bunyan, and the classic themes of pilgrimage — contemplation, purging of past sins — are threaded through the novel.
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