The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy

The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy

  - Rachel Joyce

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ exactly two years ago (can’t help remarking on the coincidence that finished the two books on the same date!). After this time, it is a little difficult to recollect in much detail my thoughts on the book, but I can recall the overall impression that I liked it, though I was not overwhelmed as most of the readers whose feedback I encountered. My feeling about ‘The Love Song …’ is the same – it had interesting aspects, but not something I would call an absolute must-read.

This is more of a companion book than a sequel, since it can be read standalone (even though it would be better to have read Harold Fry, to get a better sense of the context). So often, after you read and are touched by a book, you want more of the story of a significant secondary character, whose story did not form the focus of the original book (after reading Henry’s tale in ‘Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet’, I am fervently hoping for Jamie Ford to write Keiko’s story). So was the case of Queenie Hennessy – the first book left one with so many questions - what eventually became of her, and most important, what was so special about her that Harold Fry chose to undertake a such a unique journey as a tribute to her after all these years. This book provides these answers and more, and wonderfully so, and in some ways I found her story more intriguing than that of Fry.

The story of her past, from her childhood, to her few years with Harold and her life thereafter, are related as she goes over her memories in her final days. This time that she is spending in the hospice for terminally ill patients looked after by some very compassionate nuns, is the most poignant part of the book. These people won my heart, and at places, moved me to tears. Her unique bond with Harold’s son David is wonderfully done as well. Her recollections are a long letter she addresses to Harold, comprising of things she wants to tell him, and things that she feels she must. The end, though expected (she has terminal cancer after all), was no less painful.

The biggest thing that prevented this from being a great book was the completely cheesy romance - a more subtle and compassionate expression of love would have been more suited to the characters. Repeated assertions of how much she loved Harold and how afraid she was of unintentionally revealing her feelings, made her seem more like a teenage girl. It was also not something that the reader needed to be reminded of after every other chapter.

Another thing that puts me off in books is a painfully long drawn mystery, when the author constantly keeps hinting of some terrible event through out the book. It makes me annoyed enough that I stop caring about it altogether. In this book, there were two of these – what was her great and treacherous secret that she wants Harold to forgive her for, and what did his wife say to her as she left. Authors, please, if you have a world-shattering secret to spring up on the clueless characters (and readers), do shatter the world by all means; but please make the revelation at the right moment as a surprise to us as well.