The love song of Miss Queenie Hennessy A novel

*Starred Review* In Joyce's Man Booker Prize short-listed debut novel (The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, 2012), her peripatetic protagonist walks the length of England to get to the hospice bedside of Queenie Hennessy, a coworker he knew briefly, though not well, 20 years earlier. In this beguiling follow-up, Joyce tracks Harold's journey from Queenie's point-of-view. Disfigured and silenced by a facial malignancy, Queenie can only communicate through scrawled notes and garbled grunts; but with each of Fry's postcards imploring her to hang on until his arrival, Queenie takes the opportunity to revisit their shared past, trying to atone for her perceived part in the suicide death of Harold's son, David. With the support and exhortations of her tender caregivers and boisterous fellow patients, Queenie reveals a lonely but ultimately rewarding life gardening by the sea, where she both abandoned and embraced her love for this strange, silent man. Sequels are often slippery things, books readers welcome a bit hesitantly, fearful that the second installment won't hold a candle to the first. In telling Queenie's side of the story, Joyce accomplishes the rare feat of endowing her continuing narrative with as much pathos and warmth, wisdom and poignancy as her debut. Harold was beloved by millions; Queenie will be, too.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2015 Booklist

Joyce's bestselling novel, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, followed the journey of Harold, a retiree who chose to walk the entire length of England to reunite with an old friend. This novel focuses on the old friend in question: Queenie Hennessy, who's dying of cancer in a hospice in northern England. When she receives word that Harold's begun walking the 600 miles to see her, Queenie's apprehensive: they haven't seen each other in 20 years. As she begins to write in a long letter to Harold, readers see that their unorthodox friendship was far more complicated than Harold may think. Through Queenie's flashbacks, we see the beginnings of their friendship when they met as coworkers at the local brewery. We also learn new information about Queenie's secret friendship with Harold's teen son, David; the circumstances around David's tragic early death; and Queenie's long-hidden feelings for Harold. In the present day, Queenie's fellow patients in the hospice also take up the mantle of waiting for Harold, and some poignant and hilarious new bonds form. Fans of Harold's story will appreciate a chance to meet him again and hear his story from a new angle, and after a slow and slightly confusing start, even newcomers to Queenie and Harold's doomed love story will not be immune to its charms. A bittersweet final twist is a fitting cap to a tragic, touching tale. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

All you have to do is wait! Your letter arrived this morning. We were in the dayroom for morning activities. Everyone was asleep. Sister Lucy, who is the youngest nun volunteering in the hospice, asked if anyone would like to help with her new jigsaw. Nobody answered. "Scrabble?" she said. Nobody stirred. "How about Mousetrap?" said Sister Lucy. "That's a lovely game." I was in a chair by the window. Outside, the winter evergreens flapped and shivered. One lone seagull balanced in the sky. "Hangman?" said Sister Lucy. "Anyone?" A patient nodded, and Sister Lucy fetched paper. By the time she'd got sorted, pens and a glass of water and so on, he was dozing again. Life is different for me at the hospice. The colors, the smells, the way a day passes. But I close my eyes and I pretend that the heat of the radiator is the sun on my hands and the smell of lunch is salt in the air. I hear the patients cough, and it is only the wind in my garden by the sea. I can imagine all sorts of things, Harold, if I put my mind to it. Sister Catherine strode in with the morning delivery. "Post!" she sang. Full volume. "Look what I have here!" "Oh, oh, oh," went everyone, sitting up. Sister Catherine passed several brown envelopes, forwarded, to a Scotsman known as Mr. Henderson. There was a card for the new young woman. (She arrived yesterday. I don't know her name.) There is a big man they call the Pearly King, and he had another parcel though I have been here a week and I haven't yet seen him open one. The blind lady, Barbara, received a note from her neighbor--­Sister Catherine read it out--­spring is coming, it said. The loud woman called Finty opened a letter informing her that if she scratched off the foil window, she would discover that she'd won an exciting prize. "And, Queenie, something for you." Sister Catherine crossed the room, holding out an envelope. "Don't look so frightened." I knew your writing. One glance and my pulse was flapping. Great, I thought. I don't hear from the man in twenty years, and then he sends a letter and gives me a heart attack. I stared at the postmark. Kingsbridge. Straight away I could picture the muddy blue of the estuary, the little boats moored to the quay. I heard the slapping of water against the plastic buoys and the clack of rigging against the masts. I didn't dare open the envelope. I just kept looking and looking and remembering. Sister Lucy rushed to my aid. She tucked her childlike finger under the flap and wiggled it along the fold to tear the envelope open. "Shall I read it out for you, Queenie?" I tried to say no, but the no came out as a funny noise she mistook for a yes. She unfolded the page, and her face seeped with pink. Then she began to read. "It's from someone called Harold Fry." She went as slowly as she could, but there were a few words only. "I am very sorry. Best wishes. Oh, but there's a P.S. too," said Sister Lucy. "He says, Wait for me." She gave an optimistic shrug. "Well, that's nice. Wait for him? I suppose he's going to make a visit." Sister Lucy folded the letter carefully and tucked it back inside the envelope. Then she placed my post in my lap, as if that were the end of it. A warm tear slipped down the side of my nose. I hadn't heard your name spoken for twenty years. I had held the words only inside my head. "Aw," said Sister Lucy. "Don't be upset, Queenie. It's all right." She pulled a tissue from the family-­size box on the coffee table and carefully wiped the corner of my closed-­up eye, my stretched mouth, even the thing that is on the side of my face. She held my hand, and all I could think of was my hand in yours, long ago, in a stationery cupboard. "Maybe Harold Fry will come tomorrow," said Sister Lucy. At the coffee table, Finty still scratched away at the foil window on her letter. "Come on, you little bugger," she grunted. "Did you say 'Harold Fry'?" Sister Catherine jumped to her feet and clapped her hands as if she was trapping an insect. It was the loudest thing that had happened all morning, and everyone murmured "Oh, oh, oh" again. "How could I have forgotten? He rang yesterday. Yes. He rang from a phone box." She spoke in small broken sentences, the way you do when you're trying to make sense of something that essentially doesn't. "The line was bad and he kept laughing. I couldn't understand a word. Now I think about it, he was saying the same thing. About waiting. He said to tell you he was walking." She slipped a yellow Post-­it note from her pocket and quickly unfolded it. "Walking?" said Sister Lucy, suggesting this was not something she'd tried before. "I assumed he wanted directions from the bus station. I told him to turn left and keep going." A few of the volunteers laughed, and I nodded as if they were right, they were right to laugh, because it was too much, you see, to show the consternation inside me. My body felt both weak and hot. Sister Catherine studied her yellow note. "He said to tell you that as long as he walks, you must wait. He also said he's setting off from Kingsbridge." She turned to the other nuns and volunteers. "Kingsbridge? Does anyone know where that is?" Sister Lucy said maybe she did but she was pretty sure she didn't. Someone told us he'd had an old aunt who lived there once. And one of the volunteers said, "Oh, I know Kingsbridge. It's in South Devon." "South Devon?" Sister Catherine paled. "Do you think he meant he's walking to Northumberland from all the way down there?" She was not laughing anymore, and neither was anyone else. They were only looking at me and looking at your letter and seeming rather anxious and lost. Sister Catherine folded her Post-­it note and disappeared it into the side pocket of her robe. "Bull's-­eye!" shouted Finty. "I've won a luxury cruise! It's a fourteen-­night adventure, all expenses paid, on the Princess Emerald!" "You have not read the small print," grumbled Mr. Henderson. And then, louder: "The woman has not read the small print." I closed my eyes. A little later I felt the sisters hook their arms beneath me and lift my body into the wheelchair. It was like the way my father carried me when I was a girl and I had fallen asleep in front of the range. "Stille, stille," my mother would say. I held tight on to your envelope, along with my notebook. I saw the dancing of crimson light beyond my eyelids as we moved from the dayroom to the corridor and then past the windows. I kept my eyes shut all the way, even as I was lowered onto the bed, even as the curtains were drawn with a whoosh against the pole, even as I heard the click of the door, afraid that if I opened my eyes the wash of tears would never stop. Harold Fry is coming, I thought. I have waited twenty years, and now he is coming. Excerpted from The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy: A Novella by Rachel Joyce All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.