Saturday 9th March

I have just finished reading the most wonderful book.  It is by Rachel Joyce, and it is her first novel which she developed from a play.  She has been a successful playwright but people around her persuaded her to turn a short play into a novel, and thank goodness she did.  This is a very English novel, and I cannot imagine it being a big hit in America, it is just too ordinary.  In fact in places it is just too ordinary for England too, and at one point I was tempted to put it down, but if you persist with it that very ordinariness becomes the structure, the essence of the book.

It is about an ordinary and boring couple who deep down are desperate to re-discover the love they once had for each other, but cannot find the means or the language to do so.  One day a letter arrives and stirs up memories of the past which Harold thought he had successfully buried.  He sets off to post a letter and after a conversation with a girl in a garage he suddenly decides to walk almost the entire length of Britain.  The book is about both Harold’s journey and his memories and those of his wife, and they too are ordinary really.  But underneath this patina of ordinariness is real pain and suffering and eventually redemption.

And running through the book is this vein of compassion and understanding that is heart-warming and uplifting.  This is a book I wish I had written.  In fact if I could write half as well as this I would be happy.  A rare nine out of ten I think.