This is a companion book to "The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry". We read that novel in February 2013 for Book Club, where he is walking from Kingsbridge in Devon to Berwick-on Tweed to "save" Queenie Hennessy. She is terminally ill and a resident of a hospice and while Harold is walking, here she takes up her story of how she came to meet Harold and how she took flight at a difficult time.
It is therefore nine years since I read the Harold Fry book that I now see I really loved. This story is equally great, Rachel Joyce mixes a one-way love story with charm, wit and darkness. The shortish chapters alternate between Queenie's time at the hospice and the other patients, with what happened 20 years ago when she worked alongside Harold Fry. At the heart of this story is Harold's son David. A clever boy, on his way to Cambridge, he sees Queenie (who went to Oxford) as an older kindred spirit.
His parents never know about this relationship, something Queenie will live to regret. He actually despises his parents. David is sponger, a thief and actually one of the nastiest characters I have encountered for a long time. Rarely do I get angry reading but stealing from someone who actually cares for him. That's bad. "I'd rather die than be ordinary".
Queenie is persuaded by the nuns at the hospice to write her story. She wants to tell Harold everything that caused her departure. She tells us how she made her way as far away as possible and ended up at Embleton Bay in Northumberland. This was particularly interesting for me, as we had walked this part of the coast a few times on holiday. She describes where she made her home, near the golf course, Dunstanburgh Castle and Craster which are all so familiar. Wonderful
Having enjoyed all the seven other Beryl Bainbridge books I have read; this came as a major disappointment. Whilst it is humorous on occasions, it just seems to show off the author's knowledge of Russian tourist spots as our three visitors are whisked from Moscow to Leningrad and Gori? Obviously, the trip does not go as planned. There is a very boring repetitive plot about a missing suitcase. The whole time there is the mystery of the missing Nina, whom our "hero" was hoping to spend time with. Not for me.
This was another disappointment. Anne Enwright's most recent book "Actress" was a delight. "What are you like" is from twenty years ago and only takes shape after halfway. Maria is born with a twin sister, but with the death of her mother in childbirth, her father, Berts, can only cope with one. It is only later we find out what happened to the other.
There are so many switches in time and character, it takes some concentration to keep up. Even later in the book, new characters pop up. Is this the author practicing for her later better novels? The best parts follow Maria at twenty: "She always felt like someone else. She had always felt like the wrong girl".
SPOILER ALERT
The book settles down in the latter half with the alternating stories of the separated twenty year old twins Maria and Rose. It's just that we had to wait so long for coherent story telling
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