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Published Feb 2023
192 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Paperback Original.
Publication Information
Ten years ago, Harold Fry set off on a six-hundred-mile walk to save a friend. But the story doesn't end there. Now his wife, Maureen, has her own pilgrimage to make.
Only she can finish the journey her husband started.
Maureen and Harold Fry have settled into a quiet life, but when an unexpected message from the North disturbs their peaceful equilibrium, Maureen realizes that it's now her turn to make a journey. But she is not like her affable, easygoing husband. By turns outspoken, then vulnerable, she struggles to form bonds with the people she meets—and the landscape she crosses has radically changed. Maureen has no sense of what she will find at the end of the road. All she knows is that she has to get there.
A deeply felt, lyrical, and powerful novel, Maureen explores love, loss, and how we come to terms with the past in order to understand ourselves a little better. While this book stands alone, it is also the extraordinarily moving finale to a trilogy that began with the phenomenal bestseller The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and continued in The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy. Like those beloved books, Maureen has all the power and weight of a classic.
"A beautiful novella about motherhood, grief and the power of forgiveness... Prickly and wary of strangers, Maureen is nonetheless portrayed with compassion and tenderness by Joyce, and the novel's conclusion is deeply moving and life-affirming." - The Observer (UK)
"This slim novella ... contains a world of emotion ... The kindness of strangers is Joyce's theme, as well as forgiveness and grief. No one writes difficult feelings better." - The Daily Mail (UK)
"A real treat ... A story about belonging and understanding." - Prima (UK)
"A gorgeous read." - The i Paper (UK) ("40 Best Books to Read This Autumn")
"I was enthralled from the first page of this short, powerful book. We all have some Maureen inside us, and so the journey we take with her across England and into her own personal tumult is a satisfying, visceral one." - Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward
"This book is a perfect gem. Fans of Olive Kitteridge and Eleanor Oliphant will love Maureen Fry, and it's a brilliant coda to the Harold Fry series." - J. Ryan Stradal, bestselling author of The Lager Queen of Minnesota
"This is a quiet miracle of a book. Rachel Joyce is a master at mixing humor and pathos, and at showing hard truths about life that nonetheless make us grateful to be here." - Elizabeth Berg, author of The Story of Arthur Truluv and Earth's the Right Place for Love
"Profoundly moving and deeply human, this story of self-discovery and forgiveness is essential reading. I loved every word." - Bonnie Garmus, New York Times bestselling author of Lessons in Chemistry
"I adored Harold and Queenie, but who knew Maureen waited in the wings to steal my heart? A testament to just how exquisitely Rachel Joyce understands people, and written with kindness and such perception. I can't recommend it enough." - Joanna Cannon, bestselling author of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep and A Tidy Ending
"Maureen is so beautifully and unflinchingly portrayed—a complex contradiction of brittle and prickly with an underbelly of fragility and fear. Her journey is compelling and profoundly moving and leaves the reader feeling fully satisfied and just a little lighter." - Ruth Hogan, author of Madame Burova and The Keeper of Lost Things
This information about Maureen was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Rachel Joyce is the author of the Sunday Times and international bestsellers The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, and Perfect. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was short-listed for the Commonwealth Book Prize and long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and has been translated into thirty-six languages. Joyce was awarded the Specsavers National Book Awards New Writer of the Year in 2012. She is also the author of the digital short story A Faraway Smell of Lemon and is the award-winning writer of more than thirty original afternoon plays and classic adaptations for BBC Radio 4. Rachel Joyce lives with her family in Gloucestershire.
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