The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy

March 9, 2015
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.

September 1, 2014

Joyce's celebrated debut, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, opened with cancer-ridden Queenie Hennessy writing a good-bye letter to an old friend. Here, Queenie has written another letter, unsent, that details her upbringing and what working with Harold has meant to her. A lovely complement to Pilgrimage that also works as a stand-alone

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 1, 2015
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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)