Recently-retired Harold receives a note from his friend Queenie, who he has not seen in twenty years, to inform him that she is dying, and sets out to walk the length of England to go and see her, in the belief that as long as he walks she will not die.
This is a pilgrimage across England, but internally it is also a pilgrimage of Harold’s self, in which he comes to terms with the many things that have gone wrong and right in his life, and what role he’s played in it all. Along the way he meets a lot of people who behave as people do, but whole-heartedly accepts them all. The descriptions of the places he sees and the people he meets are lovely.
Things get much sadder and darker as they go along, but that is probably accurate to anyone’s experience of life, and even if Harold’s problems are not all solved by the end, he has at least recaptured that stalwart companion of the human condition, hope. The pace slows down in places, but never so long I became completely unengaged.
I listened to the audiobook narrated by Jim Broadbent, who voices Harold’s gentle yet undemonstrative nature very well.
I don’t think I’ll be reading the sequels, though. A perusal of the reviews indicates to me that the characterization of certain individuals are filled out in ways I’m not very interested in. To freeze Queenie as we see her here is the privilege of the reader.