The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy

Celia Imrie's pitch-perfect reading of Joyce's wonderful epistolary novel is such a transporting experience that listeners may want to start again the moment they come to the end. "Dear Harold, this may come to you as some surprise," writes Miss Queenie Hennessy from a hospice where she is preparing to die. As described in Joyce's previous novel, THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY, he is so surprised that he sets off walking the length of England to see her. As she waits, Queenie writes about their time together long ago, her life since, and the hospice experience. Imrie's exquisite timing and precise, inviting voice render everyone from dear Queenie to a crotchety Scottish hospice patient vividly clear in this funny, heartbreaking, infinitely moving story. A.C.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

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.