Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North: From the bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Harold Fry, 3)

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Realizing that she really had not quite let go of the characters, she decided to finally let Maureen have a voice. Maureen is a wonderful, frustrating character--so rigid, and so frightened of what she might learn about herself and her own past. Rachel Joyce is deeply attuned to the complex rhythms of life and love and she sublimates this understanding, sentence by delicate, powerful, glistening sentence into an unforgettable story. We meet Maureen ten years after Harold’s “unlikely pilgrimage “ from Kingsbridge to Berwick-upon-Tweed to meet the terminally ill Queenie.

We celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stories, traditions and living cultures; and we pay our respects to Elders past and present. It’s ten years since Harold make his long trek to visit Queenie Hennessy, and since then, Maureen has been haunted by something she knew about Queenie that she has never disclosed to Harold. I understand what the author was trying to do giving Maureen a voice to her grief at the loss of her son. At the start you definitely hold her at arms length but the powerful writing allows us to glimpse beneath her armour and so you grow to understand her and her pain and I end up liking her much better at the end. Hers is a very different quest from Harold’s, and her private nature makes it hard for her to ask for or accept help.A beautiful and poignant novel although I must admit to being a bit bemused by the choice of title - the 'Angel of the North' only gets a passing reference during Maureen's journey north and I thought perhaps 'Maureen Fry and the Garden of Relics' would have been a better reflection of the content. As she drives up to Embleton Bay, we are privy to Maureen’s memories of her childhood and her private thoughts on Harold and the events from ten years ago, their marriage, Queenie, and her memories of her son David who has been gone thirty years. The second part of the story is a transformation for Maureen and I liked that part of the book better although I feel like I can't trust it. Beautifully written and endlessly touching, Rachel Joyce once again captures what it means to be human in the final book of her wonderful trilogy.

She finds kindness and understanding in places she least expects it and the whole experience is heartwarming. The third and final book in the Harold Fry trilogy by Rachel Joyce revolves around Maureen Fry, Harold’s wife, who we have met in the previous two installments but get to know a bit better in this short novel. Maureen is the sort of person we pass in the street every day, every hour, and probably give little thought to. The second book, is the tale of what Queenie and her friends at Hospice, are doing, while Harold makes his pilgrimage. Harold lay beside her, his hands neat on his chest, looking so peaceful she wondered where he travelled in his sleep.Although the author does a good job of filling in some background, this won’t have nearly the impact without having watched the earlier stories unfold. And part of the deal with the stickiness of this door is that you know its difficulty will make it even easier to keep closed and ignore what’s behind.

Maureen finds herself embarking on the most challenging of journeys, finding answers in the most surprising of places, all conspiring to bring much needed changes in her life.This was a short book and I was able to read it in a single sitting and it does not work as a stand-alone.