The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry

NB: Contains spoilers

In tone as well as in subject this story reminded me of Going Under by Ray French, both deal with essentially ordinary men in the later years of middle age doing outlandish things as the outworking of a long running emotional crisis.  There is a tenderness in the writing which, without being spectacular or especially dramatic, is deeply gripping.

The way in which Harold Fry’s decision to literally walk away from his wife, and the silence that has dominated their home and their marriage for years, brings them in the end closer together speaks to a very real feeling about the way many relationships exist.  Life in the ordinary can become comfortable and taken for granted, and it is easy for the focus of your attention to be on the small things that irritate rather than the big things that under pin a relationship – put simply you fail to notice the love.  

There is also a wider theme here, and also in Going Under, about the purpose of modern life.  The crisis point in both these stories is faced at the point when work is taken away.  The business of working life had been the cushion allowing these two men to get by without facing their demons.  We live in a society that in one sense increasingly values people on the basis of their work, there is a hierarchy of value based on the working role you have, and yet at the very same time “work” is becoming an increasingly unstable feature in our lives.  The idea of a job for life, such as that Harold Fry seems to have had, is being eroded – the experience not only of redundancy but of multiple redundancies is becoming the normal arc of your career. Maybe this is healthy, preventing us from coasting for years like Harold Fry, but for many it strips them of all resources and complete collapse is the end result.