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The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy
by Rachel Joyce
This is a companion novel to The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. The narrator is the woman whose note inspires Harold to walk 627 miles to visit his former colleague as she spends her last day in a hospice. As she waits for Harold to arrive, she writes him a letter detailing her life and confessing two secrets. It may be Harold who makes the long journey across Britain, but Queenie too makes a journey: “People think you have to walk to go on a journey. But you don’t, you see. You can lie in bed and make a journey too.”
The novel succeeds in being both comic and poignant. Queenie’s fellow patients in the hospice are a quirky crew; the exchanges between them are often hilarious. One of the patients tells a volunteer, “One of the pluses of chemotherapy . . . is that all her facial and body hair has gone. It’s like a permanent Brazilian for free.” A young naïve nun (who gives haircuts to the patients) doesn’t understand the term so she is told that a Brazilian is “a sort of haircut . . . Quite short.” Later Sister Lucy offers a patient a short haircut: “’If you like, you can have a Brazilian.’”
The poignancy arises because the end is inevitable for these patients. There are repeated references to the undertaker’s van coming up the drive: “He was not there this afternoon. The undertaker’s van - Well, you know the rest.”
As Queenie reminisces, she makes observations about life: “it is harder to argue with another person . . . than it is to argue with the darker recesses of oneself” and “sometimes you cannot clear the past completely. You must live alongside your sorrow.” What she emphasizes over and over again is the importance of stopping and finding happiness in small pleasures. In the past, she realizes that she was blind: “it was such a small, plain thing that I mistook it for something ordinary and failed to see.” As she nears death, she understands that “You don’t get to a place by constantly moving, even if your journey is one of sitting still and waiting. Every once in a while you have to stop in your tracks and admire the view, a small cloud and a tree outside your window. You have to see what you did not see before. And then you have to sleep.” Queenie’s philosophical musings are not original, but they bear repetition.
I loved the allusions to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: “we would grow old. You would wear the bottoms of your trousers rolled” and “I have measured out my life in ladies’ shoes.” Queenie even dares to eat a peach. Those who are familiar with T. S. Eliot’s poem will find additional layers of meaning in the book.
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was a delightful read; this companion piece is likewise charming. At one point, Queenie says, “people are rarely the straightforward thing we think they are,” and her story shows that there is more to Queenie than Harold has realized. Those who enjoyed the first book should definitely read this one.
Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley.
Please check out my reader's blog (http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).
The novel succeeds in being both comic and poignant. Queenie’s fellow patients in the hospice are a quirky crew; the exchanges between them are often hilarious. One of the patients tells a volunteer, “One of the pluses of chemotherapy . . . is that all her facial and body hair has gone. It’s like a permanent Brazilian for free.” A young naïve nun (who gives haircuts to the patients) doesn’t understand the term so she is told that a Brazilian is “a sort of haircut . . . Quite short.” Later Sister Lucy offers a patient a short haircut: “’If you like, you can have a Brazilian.’”
The poignancy arises because the end is inevitable for these patients. There are repeated references to the undertaker’s van coming up the drive: “He was not there this afternoon. The undertaker’s van - Well, you know the rest.”
As Queenie reminisces, she makes observations about life: “it is harder to argue with another person . . . than it is to argue with the darker recesses of oneself” and “sometimes you cannot clear the past completely. You must live alongside your sorrow.” What she emphasizes over and over again is the importance of stopping and finding happiness in small pleasures. In the past, she realizes that she was blind: “it was such a small, plain thing that I mistook it for something ordinary and failed to see.” As she nears death, she understands that “You don’t get to a place by constantly moving, even if your journey is one of sitting still and waiting. Every once in a while you have to stop in your tracks and admire the view, a small cloud and a tree outside your window. You have to see what you did not see before. And then you have to sleep.” Queenie’s philosophical musings are not original, but they bear repetition.
I loved the allusions to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: “we would grow old. You would wear the bottoms of your trousers rolled” and “I have measured out my life in ladies’ shoes.” Queenie even dares to eat a peach. Those who are familiar with T. S. Eliot’s poem will find additional layers of meaning in the book.
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was a delightful read; this companion piece is likewise charming. At one point, Queenie says, “people are rarely the straightforward thing we think they are,” and her story shows that there is more to Queenie than Harold has realized. Those who enjoyed the first book should definitely read this one.
Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley.
Please check out my reader's blog (http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).