In conversation with RACHEL JOYCE
An unlikely person takes centre stage in the last part of Rachel Joyce’s Harold Fry trilogy: his wife
‘Doing ordinary things takes courage’
Rachel Joyce is the international bestselling writer of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, now being made into a film due to be released early next year.
Her other novels include The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy and Miss Benson’s Beetle. Her latest offering is Maureen and the Angel of the North, which follows the moving story of Harold’s wife.
Rachel lives near Stroud, in Gloucestershire, with her husband, five sheep, several hens and ducks, two dogs and a cat. She has four grown-up children.
I resisted writing this book for a very long time. I knew that Harold Fry was part of a trilogy, but I just felt I couldn’t write Maureen’s story. There was unfinished business between her and me, though. When I wrote the screenplay for the film during lockdown, I got close to Maureen again – but it took me four drafts to reach the completed book it is now. And I don’t mean just a page, I rewrote the entire thing four times.
It was a difficult book to write. I think that it was to do with motherhood – this burden Maureen hadn’t faced up to. I knew she would never get around it unless she embarked on the sort of journey Harold took.
The death of my father started off the whole trajectory. It was very much part of the influence in writing Harold Fry, knowing that my dad was dying. I miss him. I have been carrying this around for 10 years now, and I feel that I need to put the burden down for a while.
When they were filming Harold Fry,
I was lucky enough to visit the film set in Berwick-upon-tweed. It’s an extraordinary thing to see something you’ve imagined, that’s come out of a part of yourself, come to life. I found it incredibly moving and unsettling. Afterwards, I went on a very long walk on my own, to the end of Berwick-upon-tweed, and I stood at the water’s edge and said goodbye to my dad.
Jim Broadbent plays Harold Fry in the film. He’s perfect. People were always coming up to me and telling me he’d be their ideal Harold. And Penelope Wilton is equally extraordinary in capturing that brittle quality of Maureen with emotional depth.
Maureen and the Angel of the North is a short story and that was a deliberate choice. There’s real appeal in taking a book to the end of the garden and reading it in one sitting. I’ve tried to write a shorter story numerous times and not quite managed it. I wanted to tell the tale in a succinct, distilled way – and Maureen is a woman of few words, so it felt true to her.
I’ve had so many lovely letters and responses to my books. A university chose Harold Fry as a book to give out to all their students and to local community centres. I had a sandwich with the people from one community centre and a man said to me, ‘I just want you to know this is the best book I’ve ever read.’ His friend said, ‘You do know he can’t read. He’s never read a book.’ Everyone at the centre had got together and read it to him, chapter by chapter. He’d been given the experience by other people. I thought that was lovely. People took the time to read to him, and he sat and listened.
I have a shepherd’s hut overlooking the valley where I write my books.
I have five sheep who sit underneath it. I did have some fairy lights once but the sheep ate through them. They’ve eaten the steps too. But I know I am lucky to have a room of my own. It’s about taking your vocation seriously.
The best writing advice is so straightforward: just to keep going. That’s true of life too. Doing ordinary things takes enormous courage, so with writing I tell myself to keep going. I’m a big believer in not writing a set number of words when I work. I could write 1,000 words today and they’d be rubbish. It’s not very good for your morale.