📚 🚶Introducing our April book
+ details for our unmissable walking book club & film with author Rachel Joyce
Dear walking book clubbers,
I’m delighted to introduce you to our April pick, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce.
This is a book about a man - Harold Fry - who leaves home to post a letter one morning and ends up going on a very long walk. 600 miles! All the way from Devon to Berwick-upon-Tweed, where a former friend and colleague is dying. He insists that she waits for him, and so his journey becomes a way for him to save her life:
As long as I walk, she must live … this time I won’t let her down.
So we wonder, just how, exactly, did Harold Fry let her down last time?
On Harold’s walk he encounters many different people, who help him (some more than others) along his way, but vitally he needs to journey within to come to terms with the unspeakable sadness at his heart. On the surface, this is quite a simple book, but I found it unexpectedly profound and it certainly packs an emotional punch. I can’t wait to discuss it with you …
… and with its author, Rachel Joyce!
In case you have somehow missed this fact in our previous emails, Rachel Joyce is going to be joining us on our walk on Sunday 16th April!
After the walk, eOne Entertainment has generously laid on an exclusive advance screening of the new film adaptation for us at the Hampstead Everyman cinema at 2pm. The wonderful film (I’ve already seen it, and advise bringing hankies…) stars Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton, and will be introduced for us by Rachel Joyce.
What a treat of a day!
Please see below for links to book in to our April discussions. Scroll down to find some useful links to discover more about the book. Finally, please note that tickets for May have just gone on sale - you’ll find links to book in for the wonderful Natalia Ginzburg Little Virtues events at the bottom of this email.
Our April Harold Fry Discussions
On Hampstead Heath, with author Rachel Joyce: Sunday 16th April, 11.30-1pm, followed by a screening at the Hampstead Everyman cinema at 2-4.30pm setting off from Daunt Books Hampstead, 51 South End Road, NW3 2QB, £5-15. N.B. I’ll assume you’re coming to both, but if you’d like to do one without the other please email to let me know.
On Zoom: Monday 17th April, 8-8.40pm, £1-10
Live Discussion Thread: Friday 28th April, 1.30-2pm These threads are a chance to share what else we’ve been reading, watching and listening to over the month, as well as discussing the book.
Buy The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry from Daunt Books HERE and receive 10% off using the code WBC at checkout, or just tell them you’re in the group if you’re buying it in the shop.
Discover more about The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Rachel Joyce
Please don’t feel under any pressure to read / watch / listen to anything other than the book itself. These are just for added interest, as I know some of you enjoy reading around each month’s book. It is certainly not an exhaustive list!
HERE is a sizeable review on the Guardian by Alfred Hickling, which I think does a really good job of examining why this book is so brilliant in spite of some imperfect moments.
THIS is fascinating by Rachel Joyce about the process of adapting the novel for the screen.
I really loved THIS PIECE by Rachel Joyce about overcoming self-doubt for writers. I don’t think I’m the only self-doubting writer amongst the 1500 of us… Find courage and inspiration here!
Podcast fans might enjoy the excellent BBC Radio 4 Bookclub discussing this book, HERE, and also THIS EPISODE of On the Road with Penguin Classics, in which Rachel Joyce joins Henry Eliot to discuss The Pilgrim’s Progress.
You might enjoy her other books, not least, The Love Song of Queenie Hennessy and Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North, which make up a bit of a trilogy with this one.
Finally, you can watch the trailer of the new film here:
May *** tickets now on sale ***
The Little Virtues by Natalia Ginzburg translated by Dick Davis
Natalia Ginzburg has been recently rediscovered as one of the great Italian writers of the twentieth century; this striking and intelligent collection of essays, written between 1944 and 1960, and translated by Dick Davis, shows us why. Exploring everything from motherhood and marriage to friendship and terrible English food, covering ground from the Italian South, where she and her husband were exiled under Fascist rule to the streets of 1960s London, this book is one to treasure, full of unconventional wisdom to return to time and again.
Why did I pick it? It was such a delight to spend some time getting into Natalia Ginzburg’s work for Backlisted (one of my favourite podcasts) last year, when they invited me on to discuss her autobiographical novel Family Lexicon (you can listen to the episode here). I’ve been umming and ahhing about which of her many brilliant books to choose and in the end opted for this - not a novel, but an essay collection. There’s so much wisdom, humour, insightful and incisive writing here - I can’t wait to share it with you. If you’d like a taste, you can read her essay from it, “Winter in the Abruzzi”, on Salon here.
On Hampstead Heath: Sunday 14th May, 11.30-1pm, setting off from Daunt Books Hampstead, 51 South End Road, NW3 2QB, £5-15
On Zoom: Monday 15th May, 8-8.40pm, £1-10
Live Discussion Thread: Friday 26th May, 1.30-2pm These threads are a chance to share what else we’ve been reading, watching and listening to over the month, as well as discussing the book.
Buy The Little Virtues from Daunt Books HERE and receive 10% off using the code WBC at checkout, or just tell them you’re in the group if you’re buying it in the shop.
Happy reading,
Emily