| 50 Book Pledge | Book #56: The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson |
For your reading pleasure, I present Random House‘s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce.
Charming. Compassionate. Precious. These are just a few of the words that describe The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. What you encounter when you read its pages is a tale of grief, regret and weakness. But it’s much more than that. In it you take a journey of human exploration that illuminates Harold, the man, and his relationship with his wife, Maureen.
I warn you that your heart is sure to break on more than one occasion but that’s merely a testament to Joyce’s brilliance as a storyteller.
| 50 Book Pledge | Book #54: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce |
Well, believe it or not, it’s that time of year again. When charities and not-for-profits share their story in the hopes that you will add a chapter to their success. I, like many of you, will be doing just that. One of the organizations I’ll be supporting this year is the The Nature Conservancy of Canada.
The NCC’s story revolves around protecting “areas of natural diversity for their intrinsic value and for the benefit of our children and those after them.” But they can’t do it alone. Starting at just $40, a Gift of Canadian Nature gives not once, not twice, but thrice. “Once to the recipient with a personalized certificate and a beautiful calendar, once to the giver with a charitable tax receipt and once to Canadian wildlife.” The species being featured this year are the snowy owl, the grizzly bear, the caribou, the gray fox and the Canada lynx.
So when you open up your wallet this holiday season consider supporting NCC and ensure their story of conserving Canada’s natural wonder continues for years to come.
Novelist Hilary Mantel has won the £50,000 (roughly $65,175) Man Booker Prize for Bring up the Bodies, the second time she has taken the award.
Follow the links below to read excerpts from all the authors on the longlist. “I merely wanted novels that they would not leave behind on a beach,” said judicial chair Sir Peter Stothard, leading a panel of judges that included Dinah Birch, Amanda Foreman, Dan Stevens and Bharat Tandon.
If you want more books, we made similar literary mixtapes linking to free samples of the 2012 National Book Award Finalists, 2012 Man Booker Longlist, the Best Science Fiction of the Year the Believer Book Award nominees, the 2012 Orwell Prize shortlist, the LA Times Book Prize winners, and the Best Business Books of the Year.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Harold Fry and his wife Maureen live in a quaint English village. Harold is recently retired and not quite sure what to do with himself, but appears to be somewhat content with his life. Maureen is a cold woman, easily irritated with her husband and quite obsessed with cleaning the house. You can instantly tell they do not have a typical marriage.
When the mail arrives one afternoon, Harold receives a letter from his former coworker, Queenie, stating that she is dying of cancer. Not quite sure what to say to Queenie, a woman he hasn't heard from in years, he manages to write out a quick note and plans to walk down to the post office box and deliver it. Instead, Harold keeps walking. He decides to walk all the way to her hospice facility, hundreds of miles away, in a pair of yacht shoes, and without any supplies. This is the story of Harold's walk to Queenie.
I loved the idea of the novel and the description reminded me a bit of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, a book I was totally charmed by last year. Harold is an incredibly likeable character and you want him to make it to Queenie, so badly. He becomes a media sensation...walking across the English countryside as he is, never knowing if Queenie is still waiting for him to arrive or if she has passed away. He meets incredible characters along the way, each interesting and inspiring in their own way. Every time it seems like he should just give up, the right person comes along to convince him otherwise.
Maureen was the most complex of the characters and I found her journey my favorite part of the book. Her husband just walks out of the house one day and decides to walk to another woman. She is a hard woman, but you can slowly see her interior emotions breaking through as the books goes on and it's her breakthroughs that I kept looking forward to the most.
This was an utterly charming story and perfect to gift to those hard-to-buy-for friends and family. There is so much to like about Harold's story that everyone could learn a thing or two from him.
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Rachel Joyce
336 pages
Adult Fiction
Random House
9780812993295
July 2012
Review copy
The longlist for the 2012 Man Booker Prize has been revealed, a list that includes four debut novelists. We’ve researched these 12 finalists, finding free samples of these books scattered across the world–a number of titles aren’t even available in the U.S. yet.
Follow the links below to read excerpts from these books. The shortlist will be revealed on September 11th and the winner will be announced on October 16th.
If you want more books, we made similar literary mixtapes linking to free samples of the Believer Book Award nominees, the 2012 Orwell Prize shortlist, the LA Times Book Prize winners, the Orion Book Award Finalists, Best Mystery Books of 2011, the Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2011 and the Most Overlooked Books of 2011.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
My final
Publishing Perspectives story takes an inside look at four of the Buzz Authors of adult books—British actress and playwright Rachel Joyce (
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry), Vaddey Ratner (
In the Shadow of the Banyan), Susannah Cahalan (
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness), and Antoine Wilson (
Panorama City). Facilitated by Beatrice's own Ron Hogan, the panelists reflected not just on what they write but how they hear the voices that carry their tales.
The whole story can be found
here.
