The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy: A Novel

This is Rachel Joyce's companion to her prior novel, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Harold’s life and his outlook on his relationship to Queenie, a colleague from work, moves the first book forward. He is startled to receive a brief note from Queenie Hennessy after she left 20 years ago, telling him she is now in hospice, but thinks of him often. Harold quickly writes a response, but becomes convinced he needs to deliver his note in person and begins to walk to her, although she is 600 miles away. His pilgrimage gives him plenty of time to contemplate his life and it is through his eyes that we come to know Queenie and her part in it. Harold sends ahead a postcard letting Queenie know he is coming.However, when we are introduced to Queenie in this book, to her own story in her own words, she is near the end of her life and suffering from a tumor that has robbed her ability to speak. She fears she will not live to see the end of Harold's trek, so she begins her own letter to tell Harold about all the things she wished he had known. Within the hospice a French nun offers both her companionship and assistance to Queenie so she can write to Harold and tell her own story – all of it. (Taking the time to look up the translation of the nun’s name helped me understand her true function in this story.)If you have read the first book, most of the events and characters within Queenie’s letters will be familiar, but the telling of those events here is very different. This book can absolutely stand on its own. Harold and Queenie’s lives may have been braided together, but the ways that they took them into their souls are remarkably different. And in Queenie’s book we learn much more about her than Harold would have ever known. Key to understanding her is her own statement that whenever she has been faced with unbearable choices throughout her life, her first instinct is to flee – from her childhood home, from her life at university, and eventually from Harold. We all make assumptions about others as well as ourselves that are wholly dependent on our own perspective, even if we have shared lives with someone for years. If you have read The Unlikely Pilgrimage, this is a totally different perspective on Harold and Queenie's relationship plus an introduction to characters that are thought provoking, heart tugging and at time hilarious. Rachel Joyce is helping us see that we are all responsible for ways in which we imprison ourselves, wrapping ourselves in criticism and self condemnation, how we feed our own shame, how we lash out at the world – pushing it away, or running from it - but also that we are equally responsible for our own liberation, for welcoming beauty and love into our lives, for finding our own forgiveness, our own salvation, and how forgiving others is ultimately a grace unto ourselves.I cannot help but believe that Joyce is familiar with Dickens and has used the thoughts behind his line, “So do the shadows of our own desires stand between us and our better angels”. There is also a prayer to St. Bernadine that ends with, “Help us to always speak …words of love over words of shame.” I believe Joyce had both in mind as she wrote this wonderful book.

From a hospice the reader meets several interesting characters and the main character Queenie Hennessey who has gone there to die of disfiguring mouth cancer. Harold, a man she worked with and secretly loved, decides to walk to her across England after he receives her letter. His journey and the publicity it received gave the hospice patients something to look forward to and Queenie an opportunity to clear her conscience and to let go of the guilt she has felt for twenty years.The point I took from the book is a valuable lesson: So many consider their lives to be ordinary, but when at the end of life, they finally realize that the things that seemed so mundane actually brought much happiness and joy. I plan to see the joy in life...in the little things and not wait until I'm dying to appreciate the wonderful life I have.

What is it about?Queenie Hennessey is in hospice and writes a letter to an old friend to notify him that she is dying from cancer. She hasn't seen or heard from him in 20 years. She received a postcard from him telling her to wait for him. While she waits, she begins writing him the letter that will explain the truth of why she left.Is it good?Yes! Queenie's letter is sometimes sad, sometimes angry, sometimes funny and happy. The patients at the hospice are a wonderful cast of characters, and the memories from Queenie 's past are so engaging. I found myself on the brink of tears at least twice.You do not have to have read The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce, but that is also a wonderful book. They are set on the same time line and involve some of the same characters, but you can read each book individually.

This novel is intended to be a sequel to "the unlikely pilgrimage of harold frye" and to the extent that it answers questions that might have lingered after the first novel, it fulfill that function. However, "the love song....." Is much, much more. Rachel Joyce characters are flawed, somehow never reaching the potential they had hoped but I love all these people for their humanity and perseverance. As we know, Harold is walking to visit Queenie who is dying of cancer. He reasons that as long as he keep walking she won't die. The parallel story that takes place in the hospice is poignant. Miss Joyce deals with end of life issues with depth, sensitivity and humor. The hospice family become very precious. The sea garden, the wonderful caregivers, tha patients and Queenie, herself, are woven into a tale that will stay with you long after you've finished reading. Rachel Joyce is an extraordinary writer. Her characters are 'everyman' and 'everywoman'. They go through life unnoticed but there is drama and accomplishment reached as they strive to exist and cope with the challenges that life puts into their lives.

This a companion novel for "The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.". Lovely, sad, and compelling tale. Queenie is in hospice care and reflects about her love for Harold. The book includes secrets about Harold's son David, a lost baby, love, a sea garden, dancing, a cruel boss, a mysterious nun, a confession letter, friends who are dying, and more. This book is well written and has a compelling flow. Excellent. I will definating read another book by this author. Highly recommended!! This book deserves an A++++++++

I loved "Harold Fry" and the first 100 or so pages of this book were a complete rehash of that story. Then when we got to the new part of the story, it was such a downer and absolutely painful to read. The occasional parts about the hospice patients were funny and encouraging to all of us, making us look at life in a different way. I wanted to give it 3 stars because of that, but the rest of the story was so bad, I couldn't let myself do that.The writing was good as it was in Harold Fry, but good writing can't make up for a bad story.

I loved the Pilgrimage of Harold Fry when I read it several years ago, but this was surprisingly better! A simply written story of undying love and solitude that is nonetheless very powerful. This story centres on a hospice essentially filled with death, but the focus of the story lies in life. The difficult journey we all take to self discovery and confessions of the secrets deep in our hearts is laid out for the reader before Queenie makes her final journey. While Harold continues on his difficult task filled with both emotional and physical trials on his way to Queenie, Queenie herself clings to her memories and repents her perceived errors. This is a moving and starkly real tale raw in emotions and the final meeting between the wo characters is both heartbreaking and inevitable. This is really a compendium to the Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and must be placed side by side on the shelf without a chronological order for they are two halves of one story.

After reading (and loving) 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry', I was keen to read this. It's not a sequel but rather runs alongside the first book, a companion. When I first began reading, I didn't think it grabbed me as much as the 'not prequel' but I was very wrong. Very involving, touching story, showing Queenie's perspective and building upon the characters from the other book; I loved this. A book might occasionally make me shed a tear but by the end, this one caused an unprecedented outpouring. I highly recommend you read 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry' followed by this one. And as a person who isn't very outwardly emotional, even I can only wonder at those who gave it a one star review. Beautiful story.

Having read this book, I am an emotional wreck. I read The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry and then I read Queenie's story . It was heartbreaking. I knew what the end would bring but I still hoped there would be a cheesy ending. I still wanted it to have a happy ending. And there is no 'happy' ending. The book is written with insight and passion that you seldom see or read about. The characters are finely drawn and credible . There is comedy to make you laugh and a tragic love story. Rachel Joyce is a talented writer . Her books are worth every tear.

Miss Queenie Hennessy - the name just rolls off the tongue. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and felt as if I were reading about a real person. I'd read The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry some years ago but The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy most certainly shows us the bigger picture - what a brilliant idea of the author to link the two books in this way.I absolutely loved reading about Queenie and although her time in the hospice was softened somewhat with much caustic wit and one-liners from fellow patients, I was hit with pangs of sadness as each of them made their exit.I am now reading about Harold's journey once again and wondering how I'll feel at the end having since discovered the real Queenie Hennessy and HER journey!

I find myself sighing as I finish this book. Sighing with happiness that I have at long last found a book which has affected me so profoundly after years of reading. Sighing with sadness that it is finished. Other reviews will tell you the plot line very effectively , I shall only give you my thoughts in a very basic hardly educated way. Rachel Joyce seems to be able to produce work that is so well rounded and full of solid, thoughtful, caring, funny characters. There wasn't once that any question I had about the story remained unanswered but I still had the feeling of a fuller creation just beyond my imagination. Congratulations Rachel Joyce, an award of some literary or humanitarian nature is surely on its way to your doorstep.