Rachel Joyce is the author of the international bestsellers The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy. Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North completes this trilogy. She is also the author of bestsellers Perfect, The Music Shop, Miss Benson's Beetle and a collection of interlinked short stories, A Snow Garden & Other Stories. Rachel chatted to The Penguin Post about the inspiration behind her character Maureen Fry, becoming a published author later in life and bringing fiction to life.
PP. What inspired you to continue with Maureen’s story in this latest instalment?
RJ. The knowledge that the whole journey was not yet finished. It was finished for Harold and Queenie too, but for Maureen there was one step further to go – she had not made that same journey out of the familiar and into the world. I knew that if I could do it, it would complete something bigger in the other two stories as well.
PP. Did you initially set out to write a trilogy?
RJ. I didn’t initially, but as soon as I began Queenie’s story, I knew there was a third part. The question for me was always whether or not I was ‘up’ for writing it. And for a long time, I would say that I wasn’t. (I wrote four drafts of the book before I finally found the one I stayed with.) Like Maureen, I had been resisting the change I knew she would have to go through. It felt too hard for both of us because it’s about letting go of grieving. And sometimes grief can almost become a safe place.
PP. Harold Fry was inspired by your father. Who is Maureen inspired by?
RJ. Harold was only partly inspired by my father, or at least by the knowledge that he was dying. There is a lot of me in Harold. But Maureen! Where did she come from? I don’t know! She is just her own person. She always was. But some characters are like that. They turn up and stand very much in your way and ask, ‘Well what are you going to about me? Walk away?’
PP. In Maureen, you’ve created a somewhat damaged and difficult character. What did you find most interesting about her, and about writing her?
RJ. The irony is that I don’t find her an especially difficult character. I know she is snappy, awkward, abrasive – but actually I think these are things we all experience, and don’t feel comfortable about. (We are not supposed to be difficult.) But it’s also true that I am always drawn to write about people who are struggling. What moves me are the moments when people wrestle to embrace change, however difficult.
PP. In what ways has Maureen grown through your novels, and how does she continue to grow in Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North? What are some of the lessons she still won’t learn?
RJ. She has learnt the biggest lesson which, for me, is about re-birth, even at the age of seventy-two. She has learnt about becoming an individual. Will she ever change her mind about fiction and buy a book? I am not convinced. And will she ever share a sandwich with a stranger, like Harold? No. I don’t think she would be up for that either.
PP. Do you see some of yourself in Maureen, and aspects of your own life in hers?
RJ. Maureen is an introvert. She is comfortable in her own space. She likes things just so. She is not an adventurer. All these things are true of me. And maybe they’ve become a little more engrained since the pandemic.
“We must find the wonder again. I fear we have lost it.”
PP. I can imagine there are some spots along Maureen’s journey that bring on a kind of nostalgia for you; have you tied any of those personal experiences and emotions to Maureen and her own experience?
RJ. After I had written the first draft – and I am not including here the previous ones that I’d felt were wrong – I did the drive from where I live to Embleton. It was about an eight-hour journey, though actually the following morning there was a freak snow storm that no one had forecast and the journey was even longer. There is something very strange and moving about the moment where what you have imagined meets what is real. I can only describe it as living in very bright colour. The landscape I had described snapped to life, as did the service stations, the people ... It was as if I was curating the whole thing, if that doesn’t sound too arrogant. Or at least chronicling it. Taking a passing moment and trying to pin it out of time.
PP. What are you hoping readers will take away from reading Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North?
RJ. An acknowledgment that we must return to a love of nature. That we must find the wonder again. I fear we have lost it.
PP. What do you believe is behind your ability to write so masterfully on family, relationships, loss, etc.?
RJ. Like most writers, I have always been an observer. It is a comfortable place for me. I could never be a politician but maybe I could be a therapist. I find that the way people relate to one another within family is such a complicated, many textured, knotty place. And a person’s childhood tells you so much about why they’ve become the person that are. As for loss? Well it is part of everything, even love. Just as love is also part of everything.
PP. How has your experience as an actor influenced how you developed as a writer?
RJ. I always loved telling a story and obviously that is exactly what happens when a group of actors walks onto a stage in the dark and the lights come up. Theatre is about conjuring a world that – even though it is not real – becomes, for a few hours, more real than reality. The same is true for me of a good book You lose yourself for a while. You see things afresh.
PP. Your first book, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, was published around your fiftieth birthday; what would you say have been the benefits of becoming a published author later in life? Have you gotten any more used to being a renowned author?
RJ. It has been an extraordinary adventure. I have, in so many ways, been lucky. I am still amazed to see a pile of my books in a shop - and also a little crestfallen when there are absolutely none. You see, it doesn’t do very much for me if I think about wanting renown! Better by far to try to be, and to know. Better to know too that I am doing the thing I most want to do, and keep trying my best to find it.
Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North by Rachel Joyce is out now. READ AN EXTRACT >>
