Review: The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy (Harold Fry, #2)

I couldn’t believe my luck when I found this at my local library on the new books display without a reservation on it. So I snapped it up and read it in 2 days flat.
I loved The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, and this is a charming companion novel: the ying to its yang. Queenie’s voice is true and honest. Her memories of her childhood and particularly her parents’ marriage are insightful and have obviously affected how she looks at love.
This novel is all about those moments when we hold back from saying what we truly feel, thinking there will be ’the right moment’ later - and of course there never is, and how devastating the results can be.
So often unrequited love is portrayed as being very romantic, but here we also see the loneliness and despair that is a result of this choice.
The story is also a meditation on having a ‘good death’. It’s not so much about atonement, but about honesty and kindness and tidying up the messy bits of our lives before we go.
This story is poignant and moving, but, as with Harold Fry, it has moments that made me laugh out loud.
I highly recommend this novel for anyone who wants to spend some time with a lovely lady who I personally found to be honest, funny and very loveable.

• Review
• Rachel Joyce