‘How do we do it? How do we accept the unacceptable?’

This is the last book in the trilogy that began with the wonderful [b:The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry|13227454|The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Harold Fry, #1)|Rachel Joyce|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1335816092l/13227454.SY75.jpg|18156927], one of my all-time favourite books.

Ten years have passed since Harold’s return from his adventure, and we now spend time with Harold’s wife Maureen as she makes her own pilgrimage to a place where she feels she may find some peace. Maureen is not like Harold: she’s prickly and doesn’t make friends easily. She’s enveloped by grief at the loss of their only child. She is struck that a person could be trapped in a version of themselves that was from another time, and completely miss the happiness that was staring them in the face.

Maureen’s journey is both physical and emotional. At the start of her trip she wished she could be the kind of person that can say something to make someone feel better, but she couldn’t find that fleeting moment of goodness. No one understood another’s grief or another’s joy. People were not see-through at all. We watch Maureen as she slowly learns to accept friendship and love and finds a way to accept the unacceptable.

I have to make a special mention of Joyce’s acknowledgement of librarians and booksellers who kept getting books to us, even when we were all locked inside. The gate-keepers of reading. Where would we be without you? Where indeed!!!

At only 126 pages, this is a novella and can be read easily in one sitting. If you want it to resonate, you need to have read [b:The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry|13227454|The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Harold Fry, #1)|Rachel Joyce|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1335816092l/13227454.SY75.jpg|18156927] and [b:The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy|20890479|The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy (Harold Fry, #2)|Rachel Joyce|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403202599l/20890479.SY75.jpg|39861474].

In 1914, a ten year old Margery Benson falls in love with a beetle. In a book called Incredible Creatures, her father shows her a picture of The Golden Beetle of New Caledonia. Moments later, Margery’s world will be irrevocably changed.
In 1950, Margery flees her stultifying teaching job, advertises for an assistant, and starts packing for her expedition to New Caledonia to discover the Golden Beetle that has haunted her all her life. Finding an appropriate assistant proves to be much harder than Margery thought possible, and she finds herself sharing a cramped cabin on the RMS Orion on a five week voyage across the seas to Brisbane, with the irrepressible Enid Pretty.
Margery ‘was finally doing the thing she’d dreamt about as a child…She was travelling to the other side of the world. It wasn’t just the ship that had been unmoored. It was her entire sense of herself’.
As Margery and Enid journey together, Margery discovers her true self: ‘I am a woman who is ready for adventure’. She also discovers what it means to have a true friend, as Enid shows her unconditional love and support.
I found myself totally invested in Margery and Enid’s quest, as they battled the heat, the cyclones and the deprivations they encounter in New Caledonia. As Enid points out, this is Margery’s ‘vocation’ just as having a baby is hers, and you cannot ‘just walk away’. You need gumption! I fell in love with Enid and her love of life, and her unending support of Margery and her dream.
I rushed to the end of the book, and then was crushed when I reached it. Miss Benson’s Beetle is a total delight; it will make you laugh out loud, and it will make you cry. Not to be missed!
Watch this fabulous book chat with Rachel Joyce and Raynor Winn (The Salt Path & The Wild Silence) for more insight into how Rachel approached the writing of this lovely book:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k64_2zNcFcw&feature=youtu.be

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in. Greek proverb

I can prescribe A Snow Garden as the perfect antidote to the general feeling of despair that pervades our world at present.

Here are six stories (and a Forward not to be skipped) that gently draw the reader into lives that are messy and complicated and funny and sad. The characters we meet discover sometimes extraordinary and sometimes ordinary facts that have previously eluded them. In The Marriage Manual Will suddenly realises ‘his parents had put him together with the chaos of their loving. They had done their best and they had made mistakes, yes, and most of the time it was no more than a botch-job, and now those mistakes were a part of who he was. But he had been loved, he was loved, and he too could love.’ In The Boxing Day Ball Maureen thought ‘People would find one another, and sometimes it would last moments and sometimes it would last years. You could spend your life with a person and not understand them and then you could meet a boy across a dance floor and feel you knew him like a part of yourself.’

I loved these stories that are written with such heart; they celebrate the essential goodness of humanity.

The truth could be true, but not in a definite way. It could be more or less true; and maybe that was the best a human being could hope for."

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was such a perfect delight (excuse the pun), that I approached Perfect with some apprehension. From the first page I was swept away by the parallel story lines, intrigued to see where they would lead. However, I warn you, it does sag a little in the middle, and may have been lifted by some judicious work by an editor.

But, dear reader, please persevere, for the stories of Byron and James, and Jim and Eileen may not be perfect, but they are precious. Joyce has a real talent for developing characters who are irresistible - flawed and imperfect, but often kind and misunderstood, and a little eccentric. As Jim struggles to communicate his tangled feelings to Eileen “He doesn’t know if the words they are using actually mean the things they purport to mean or whether the words have taken on a new significance. They are talking about nothing, after all. And yet these words, these nothings, are all they have, and he wishes there were whole dictionaries of them.” This reminded me of the famous scene in Annie Hall between Allen’s character & Keaton’s, where they talk about nothing in particular, and it is accompanied by subtitles saying what they really want to say. A bit like real life, although we don’t, unfortunately, get subtitles to help us!
There are many moments in this novel which are heartbreakingly sad, but it isn’t maudlin. There are also some very funny moments to temper the sadness - again, a bit like real life!
If you loved Harold Fry, and think you’ll enjoy Perfect too, and fall in love with Byron and Jim.

PS. Rachel Joyce’s descriptions of the landscape and changing seasons are delightful. I wonder if she paints in her spare time? Because she paints these landscapes with her words.

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.

Harold Fry is retired and living day to day with little to look forward to. When he receives a letter from a work colleague saying goodbye, he writes a reply & walks to the corner letterbox. But rather than post it, he decides to walk to the other end of the country to deliver it in person. He has nothing with him. I found this book particularly moving as Harold reflects on past actions (or lack thereof). It is a meditation on a life where moments of intimacy were neglected, not on purpose but rather as a result of sadness not shared. At times unbearably poignant and at other times laugh out loud funny. Highly recommended.