Book Review: Maureen (Harold Fry #3) by Rachel Joyce

 

My Rating: 3.5+⭐

“Maureen was not an easy person. She knew this. She was not an easy person to like and she wasn’t good at making friends. She had once joined a book club but she objected to the things they read, and gave up. There was always someone between her and everyone else and that was her son. This year he would have turned fifty.”

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. We meet Maureen ten years after Harold’s “unlikely pilgrimage “ from Kingsbridge to Berwick-upon-Tweed to meet the terminally ill Queenie. Their relationship is now more stable and we see them as a caring couple in post-pandemic 2022. Rex, their neighbor remains a friend and agrees to look out for Harold when Maureen embarks on a short trip up north for a purpose close to her heart. 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. Maureen is by no measure as affable as Harold and is not quite comfortable meeting strangers. Thus this journey is not an easy one for her – neither the drive nor the memories but it is a journey that will affect change in the way she views the world, the people around her and most importantly herself.

“People imagined they might reach each other, but it wasn’t true. No one understood another’s grief or another’s joy. People were not see-through at all.”

With elements of sorrow, insight, humor and wisdom, Maureen by Rachel Joyce is a moving and impactful read. There is no doubt that the author writes beautifully and is capable of exploring human emotions with honesty and compassion. As we are given a window into her thoughts and feelings, you can feel Maureen’s pain, confusion, guilt and grief. Maureen was not a favorite character for me, though I did sympathize with her. Rachel Joyce gives us readers the opportunity to not only get to know her as a person but to understand her motivations and in doing so enriches the story that began with Harold Fry’s 600+ mile walk. The narrative flows easily and though this is a short novel, it does pack an emotional punch. What did bother me a bit is that due to the short length of the novel Maureen’s insight, realization and transformation did feel a tad rushed. But overall, I'm glad I got to spend time with Maureen. I also loved the segment at the end of the book titled “An Email Correspondence with Maureen Fry” which details email exchanges (fictitious of course) between the author and Maureen.

I’d recommend reading the books in the series order as it would be difficult to relate to the events mentioned in this book without knowledge of the characters’ backstories and past events.

“She had lived her life as if she was owed something extra because he had been taken away, and other women’s sons had not. She thought of Harold watching for birds and how his face lit up when he saw a bluethroat. To have lived a whole life and then find wonder in a tiny creature covered with feathers, weighing no more than a coin. What was it all for, if not for that? She felt the painful shock of joy that floods in, like blood pushing into a limb that has been starved. It was about forgiveness, the whole story.”

Many thanks to author Rachel Joyce, Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this novel and share my thoughts. All opinions expressed in this review are my own. This book is due to be released on February 7, 2023.