A letter arrives; lives are changed. Harold Fry and his wife Maureen are retired and struggling: their relationship is dead, their beds in different rooms. Then Harold receives a letter that an old friend and coworker is dying of cancer. Shaken, he writes her a letter and makes for the post box to mail it. A decision to press on a little further and take it directly to the post office leads to Harold getting it in his head that if he walks to deliver the letter to Queenie directly that she’ll live. So…he keeps walking, in his boat shoes and without a stitch of protective clothing or preparation. Although the book begins as a slightly comic, slightly sad story of a man embarking on a crazy and very uncomfortable idea, it quickly begins maturing into something altogether deep and moving. This walk of Harold’s isn’t just about trying to will the universe into not killing someone who meant something important to him; it’s about exorcising the demons of the past. Without his phone, without the distractions of everyday life that throw a sheet over that pesky inner voice — of observation, reflection, even rumination — Harold suddenly has occasion to genuinely reflect on his life and the past. Harold may be traveling lightly, but he carries burdens with him, and now he has no choice but to feel their weight. Despite the tragedy that is revealed here, though, this is not a sad book; like The Music Shop, human connection and beauty prevail. Harold’s journey wakes him up to life again — the smell of flowers and something in the wind that he’d never catch from in a car — and brings his and others’ lives together. He meets people on the road and is changed by them just as their encounters with him change them, and Harold begans to appreciate what characters we persons can be, lovely despite of our frailties. I am really loving Rachel Joyce as a writer.

Highlights:

[Butterflies] have such a short time to live, and they spend it kissing flowers.

It’s amazing, the difference a bit of light makes. Especially when it’s inside you.

People were buying milk, or filling their cars with petrol, or even posting letters. And what no one else knew was the appalling weight of the thing they were carrying inside. The superhuman effort it took sometimes to be normal, and a part of things that appeared both easy and everyday. The loneliness of that.

Wild garlic filled the air with its sweet pungency. Once more, it surprised him how much was at his feet, if only he had known to look.[….] He had learned that it was the smallness of people that filled him with wonder and tenderness, and the loneliness of that too. The world was made up of people putting one foot in front of the other; and a life might appear ordinary simply because the person living it had done so for a long time. Harold could no longer pass a stranger without acknowledging the truth that everyone was the same, and also unique; and that this was the dilemma of being human.”

It struck her again what tumult the human heart continues to feel. To a young person, passing Rex in the street, he would look like a helpless old man. Out of touch with reality, and all spent. Yet, beneath his waxen skin, and inside his portly frame, there was a heart that beat with the same passion as a teenager’s.

Sometimes you make a mistake. You do something that you can’t undo, and that mistake becomes a part of who you are. But it doesn’t define you. You define yourself.