The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
This novel is one of the best I have read this year.
The story tells of a recently retired man who receives a letter from a woman he knew years before as a colleague at work. The letter is from a hospice where she is dying. He writes her a letter and sets out to post it but on the way to the postbox he feels this reaction is inadequate so he walks to the next post box and then the town centre. He then keeps on walking until he gets to the woman's side in the hospice in Berwick on Tweed. This walk takes many weeks as he lives on the south coast in Dorset. (In all Harold covers 627 miles over 87 days.) Harold does not even have a map with him and only the clothes he sets out in. Totally unprepared for walking, he only ever walks as far as his car, his feet suffer serious blisters and he manages scant few miles each day. The story develops around the people he encounters on this journey and the experiences that he relives as the walk gives him time and space to think.
He has the first ever opportunity to consider his life with all its perceived failures and his failed relationships as he walks. He comes to a number of conclusions about his personal history, as does his wife who reconsiders her life too in he space that his leaving creates. His journey is a constant battle with self doubt. He is ordinary and yet displays much natural unconscious goodness.
Harold survives and thrives because of the gifts and help receives from people he meets en route. He meets many varied folk and takes an interest in their stories as he tells them his. The book addresses they way that we all have to come to terms with unpleasant memories. As he comes to terms with the past he is aware of coming to life again. In doing so he becomes much more aware of the world going on around him. He sees the plants flowers and views from the roadside for the first time in his life. It is as if his life has been a dull, grey, flat existence and now it begins to become three dimensional and coloured again. The themes covered include regret, grief, meaning of life, thankfulness, gratitude, revenge and love.
This is a novel that has a deep human quality in it and expresses a faith in a deep down human goodness that receives many knock backs from the world yet is in some sense irrepressible.
The skilful plot construction contains some twists that completely took me by surprise.
It is a pilgrims progress for the modern age, replacing Christianity with “self awareness” and “finding yourself” as the religious motifs of our time. Harold treks through the slough of despond and emerges with a much clearer idea of what his life means and what is really important.
It is a simply written, accessible, and moving story of a recognisable likeable ordinary guy. He describes honestly his struggles with life and how he finds some peace through a stoical acceptance. It is also a celebration of the innate kindness of strangers.
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Image courtesy of dan /FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Book review: Andrew Bowen - "Project Conversion: one man, 12 faiths, one year" ISBN: 0615741592 Publisher: Fourth Gate Books (29 Jan 2013)
Andrew Bowen's book "Project Conversion: one man, 12 faiths, one year" was pointed out to me by a friend who is passionate about interfaith issues. It was available as a free download for Kindle on that day. I downloaded a copy and was intrigued by the idea behind the book.
The author, writes about a year in his life when he lived each month in accordance with the practice and rules of one particular faith, as if he had been converted to that faith. What makes this more than a book describing and comparing the religious beliefs and ensuing lifestyles of twelve different faiths is that it is the very human story of a family man devoting himself to this project whilst trying to juggle his responsibilities as a husband, father and college student and often failing. Though it is not a theological, philosophical or academic treatise he tells his story well.
The project was undertaken to help him come to terms with religion. He had rejected his evangelical Christianity after his wife suffered an entropic pregnancy. He also revealed that his reaction to the 9-11 incident was hatred for all Muslims and in the immediate aftermath he attempted to join the army so that he could get revenge.
The book reveals his obsessive, butterfly, personality and his interest in the minutia of religious practice. He had his head shaved or grew a beard or wore robes as appropriate to get the feel of a particular faith. The wisest comment in the book comes from one of his daughters who asks if she and her sister can pretend with him that day! That is the essence of his year - each month pretending to be someone else. It is good to walk in another’s shoes and try to see the world from their perspective. This is very hard to achieve in terms of religious faith because faith develops over years and at best is at the very core of a person. In this way it affects every part of a person's life and outlook. Conversion cannot be pretended - it either is or isn't.
Some of the insights into American culture were fascinating for me, a European. His wife became frantic when he walked through their town wearing robes as she was concerned he might be shot! (The reason I will never visit the USA incidentally is I believe their non-existent gun laws make it a place where it is very easy to get shot!) It was also clear that unlike many people in Europe he lives in an area without a significant population of people from ethnic other faiths. In Scotland we take for granted that all children under eleven will have visited a mosque, church and synagogue in their locality as part of the school curriculum.
He was welcomed by many people from the different faith groups, some of whom acted as his mentors each month. He learned from them, enjoyed socialising and eating with them as well as discussing the practices and beliefs of their faith. I think he went too far with his pretending. He could probably have gained the same insights and experience by meeting these people and especially if he had shared meals with them. Judging by my reception from other faith groups, he would have found a genuine, warm, welcome. To dress in a turban and wear a beard just because you are studying Sikhs that month is verging on the patronising.
His personal journey was successful in that he felt a new sense of brotherhood with those he had formerly despised or hated. On the other hand it failed in that by pretending to be converted to twelve different outlooks he inoculated himself from being truly converted by any one of them. In the end he was in the position of so many middle class “new age” people these days who pick and mix from the basket of traditional religions to find elements that “do something” for them. This pre-eminence given to the personal experiential dimension indicates the philosophical mindset of evangelical Christianity from which Bowen has not escaped. He uses his personal mystical existentialism as a judge of truth. He also is in danger of falling into the trap of most new agers who see religion as a lifestyle choice rather than a commitment that forces you, sometimes against your will, to engage with the world in the struggle for peace and justice.
Though I have ended up in a very different place to the author, I could not help but but be impressed by his honesty which took you intimately inside his life through that year.
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