Extra Ordinary: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

December 2023’s Introvert Book Club selection: When an unremarkable old man takes off on a whim across the length of Britain, his everyday frustrations and insights become a spiritual quest.

Walking: something most of us do each day as we pursue our livelihood and leisure.  But to walk more than 600 miles to visit a dying friend when a car or bus would have gotten us there in a day?  That’s either insanity or a journey elevated into a pilgrimage.

In the 2012 novel by Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, a recently retired Englishman receives a letter from an old friend saying she is terminally ill.  Harold, whose marriage has gone stale and whose daily life never involved anything unexpected, scrawls a commiserating reply to her on a postcard but hesitates to mail it when he gets to the post box.  He walks on to the next post box, and the next, and then the next.  After a short conversation with a convenience store clerk, he decides to keep walking to the friend’s hospice, hundreds of miles to the north, with the idea that his trek will keep the friend alive until he gets there.