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★2013年欧洲首席畅销小说,上市一年,仅英美德三国累计销量1,000,000册!!感动36国,同名电影拍摄中
★台湾上市20天,狂卖10万册,台湾读者表示“很久没有读一本书读到凌晨”、“是一个简单、素朴但会令人深深感动的故事”、“是一本阖上书后对于人生启发与感触良多的佳作”
★本书2012年3月在英国上市,4颗半星好评。读者评论,“小说的主人公就是自己”,“笑泪交织的阅读”。
★入围2012年布克文学奖;2013年春季英国有影响力“理查与茱蒂”读书俱乐部书单;欧普拉读书俱乐部夏日选书、美国图书馆协会选书;2012年英国畅销新人小说;《出版人周刊》、《纽约时报》、《泰晤士报》、《嘉人》、《今日美国》等各大媒体高评价推荐
★他以为人生就这么过去了,直到收到那封信
★1个人,87天,627英里
★有关爱的回归、自我发现、日常生活的信念以及万物之美
★这一年,全球40余国读者交了同一个朋友;这一年,我们都需要哈罗德安静而勇敢的陪伴 内容简介
Meet Harold Fry, recently retired. He lives in a small English village with his wife, Maureen, who seems irritated by almost everything he does, even down to how he butters his toast. Little differentiates one day from the next. Then one morning the mail arrives, and within the stack of quotidian minutiae is a letter addressed to Harold in a shaky scrawl from a woman he hasn’t seen or heard from in twenty years. Queenie Hennessy is in hospice and is writing to say goodbye.
Harold pens a quick reply and, leaving Maureen to her chores, heads to the corner mailbox. But then, as happens in the very best works of fiction, Harold has a chance encounter, one that convinces him that he absolutely must deliver his message to Queenie in person. And thus begins the unlikely pilgrimage at the heart of Rachel Joyce’s remarkable debut. Harold Fry is determined to walk six hundred miles from Kingsbridge to the hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed because, he believes, as long as he walks, Queenie Hennessey will live.
Still in his yachting shoes and light coat, Harold embarks on his urgent quest across the countryside. Along the way he meets one fascinating character after another, each of whom unlocks his long-dormant spirit and sense of promise. Memories of his first dance with Maureen, his wedding day, his joy in fatherhood, come rushing back to him—allowing him to also reconcile the losses and the regrets. As for Maureen, she finds herself missing Harold for the first time in years.
And then there is the unfinished business with Queenie Hennessy.
A novel of unsentimental charm, humor, and profound insight into the thoughts and feelings we all bury deep within our hearts, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry introduces Rachel Joyce as a wise—and utterly irresistible—storyteller.
哈罗德·弗莱,六十岁,在酿酒厂干了四十年销售代表后默默退休,没有升迁,既无朋友,也无敌人,退休时公司甚至连欢送会都没开。他跟隔阂很深的妻子住在英国的乡间,生活平静,夫妻疏离,日复一日。
一天早晨,他收到一封信,来自二十年未见的老友奎妮。她患了癌症,写信告别。震惊、悲痛之下,哈罗德写了回信,在寄出的路上,他由奎妮想到了自己的人生,经过了一个又一个邮筒,越走越远,最后,他从英国最西南一路走到了最东北,横跨整个英格兰。87天,627英里,只凭一个信念:只要他走,老友就会活下去!
这是哈罗德千里跋涉的故事。从他脚步迈开的那一刻起,与他六百多英里旅程并行的,是他穿越时光隧道的另一场旅行。 作者简介
Rachel Joyce is an award-winning writer of more than 20 plays for BBC Radio 4. She started writing after a 20-year acting career in which she performed leading roles for the Royal Shakespeare Company and won multiple awards. Rachel Joyce lives in Gloucestershire on a farm with her family and is at work on her second novel.
蕾秋·乔伊斯 (Rachel Joyce)
资深剧作家,写了二十年的广播剧本,包括二十出以上的BBC Radio 4 原创广播剧。同时活跃于剧场界,获得无数剧本奖,转而创作小说。
《一个人的朝圣》是她的首部小说,未出版已售出二十余国外语版权,一上市即广受各界媒体瞩目,也是读书俱乐部、图书馆热门推荐书单,英国年度最佳新人小说。此书描写一位平凡男人在面对人生已残破、连希望也遗弃他之际,如何透过一段不平凡的徒步旅程,重获人生的第二次机会与挚爱的感人故事。 精彩书评
Advance praise for The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
“When it seems almost too late, Harold Fry opens his battered heart and lets the world rush in. This funny, poignant story about an ordinary man on an extraordinary journey moved and inspired me.”—Nancy Horan, author of Loving Frank
“There’s tremendous heart in this debut novel by Rachel Joyce, as she probes questions that are as simple as they are profound: Can we begin to live again, and live truly, as ourselves, even in middle age, when all seems ruined? Can we believe in hope when hope seems to have abandoned us? I found myself laughing through tears, rooting for Harold at every step of his journey. I’m still rooting for him.”—Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife
“Marvelous! I held my breath at his every blister and cramp, and felt as if by turning the pages, I might help his impossible quest succeed.”—Helen Simonson, author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand
“Harold’s journey is ordinary and extraordinary; it is a journey through the self, through modern society, through time and landscape. It is a funny book, a wise book, a charming book—but never cloying. It’s a book with a savage twist—and yet never seems manipulative. Perhaps because Harold himself is just wonderful.... I’m telling you now: I love this book.”—Erica Wagner, The Times (UK)
这本小说是轻快的,带有些喜剧色彩,用强有力的新声音表达出了一个古老的英式故事,独创,细腻,感人。——布克文学奖入围语
《一个人的朝圣》不仅关于爱的失去,还关于日常生活的信念及万物之美,从哈罗德把一只脚放到另一只前面的微小动作开始。——《纽约时报》
Wonderful!——《卫报》
这趟旅程穿过自我、走过现代社会百态、跨越时间和地理风景。——《泰晤士报》
这本小说凝聚了作者的智慧,绕过过度伤感或异想天开的泥淖,达到了一个几乎令人难以承受的动人结局。——《每日邮报》 前言/序言
1
Harold and the Letter
The letter that would change everything arrived on a Tuesday. It was an ordinary morning in mid-April that smelled of clean washing and grass cuttings. Harold Fry sat at the breakfast table, freshly shaved, in a clean shirt and tie, with a slice of toast that he wasn’t eating. He gazed beyond the kitchen window at the clipped lawn, which was spiked in the middle by Maureen’s telescopic washing line, and trapped on all three sides by the neighbors’ stockade fencing.
“Harold!” called Maureen above the vacuum cleaner. “Post!”
He thought he might like to go out, but the only thing to do was mow the lawn and he had done that yesterday. The vacuum tumbled into silence, and his wife appeared, looking cross, with a letter. She sat opposite Harold.
Maureen was a slight woman with a cap of silver hair and a brisk walk. When they first met, nothing had pleased him more than to make her laugh. To watch her neat frame collapse into unruly happiness. “It’s for you,” she said. He didn’t know what she meant until she slid an envelope across the table, and stopped it just short of Harold’s elbow. They both looked at the letter as if they had never seen one before. It was pink. “The postmark says Berwick-upon-Tweed.”
He didn’t know anyone in Berwick. He didn’t know many people anywhere. “Maybe it’s a mistake.”
“I think not. They don’t get something like a postmark wrong.” She took toast from the rack. She liked it cold and crisp.
Harold studied the mysterious envelope. Its pink was not the color of the bathroom suite, or the matching towels and fluffed cover for the toilet seat. That was a vivid shade that made Harold feel he shouldn’t be there. But this was delicate. A Turkish Delight pink. His name and address were scribbled in ballpoint, the clumsy letters collapsing into one another as if a child had dashed them off in a hurry: Mr. H. Fry, 13 Fossebridge Road, Kingsbridge, South Hams. He didn’t recognize the handwriting.
“Well?” said Maureen, passing a knife. He held it to the corner of the envelope, and tugged it through the fold. “Careful,” she warned.
He could feel her eyes on him as he eased out the letter, and prodded back his reading glasses. The page was typed, and addressed from a place he didn’t know: St. Bernadine’s Hospice. Dear Harold, This may come to you as some surprise. His eyes ran to the bottom of the page.
“Well?” said Maureen again.
“Good lord. It’s from Queenie Hennessy.”
Maureen speared a nugget of butter with her knife and flattened it the length of her toast. “Queenie who?”
“She worked at the brewery. Years ago. Don’t you remember?”
Maureen shrugged. “I don’t see why I should. I don’t know why I’d remember someone from years ago. Could you pass the jam?”
“She was in finances. She was very good.”
“That’s the marmalade, Harold. Jam is red. If you look at things before you pick them up, you’ll find it helps.”
Harold passed her what she needed and returned to his letter. Beautifully set out, of course; nothing like the muddled writing on the envelope. Then he smiled, remembering this was how it always was with Queenie: everything she did so precise you couldn’t fault it. “She remembers you. She sends her regards.”
Maureen’s mouth pinched into a bead. “A chap on the radio was saying the French want our bread. They can’t get it sliced in France. They come over here and they buy it all up. The chap said there might be a shortage by summer.” She paused. “Harold? Is something the matter?”
He said nothing. He drew up tall with his lips parted, his face bleached. His voice, when at last it came, was small and far away. “It’s—cancer. Queenie is writing to say goodbye.” He fumbled for more words but there weren’t any. Tugging a handkerchief from his trouser pocket, Harold blew his nose. “I um. Gosh.” Tears crammed his eyes.
Moments passed; maybe minutes. Maureen gave a swallow that smacked the silence. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He nodded. He ought to look up, but he couldn’t.
“It’s a nice morning,” she began again. “Why don’t you fetch out the patio chairs?” But he sat, not moving, not speaking, until she lifted the dirty plates. Moments later the vacuum cleaner took up from the hall.
Harold felt winded. If he moved so much as a limb, a muscle, he was afraid it would trigger an abundance of feeling he was doing his best to contain. Why had he let twenty years pass without trying to find Queenie Hennessy? A picture came of the small, dark-haired woman with whom he had worked all that time ago, and it seemed inconceivable that she was—what? Sixty? And dying of cancer in Berwick. Of all the places, he thought; he’d never traveled so far north. He glanced out at the garden and saw a ribbon of plastic caught in the laurel hedging, flapping up and down, but never pulling free. He tucked Queenie’s letter into his pocket, patted it twice for safekeeping, and rose to his feet.
Upstairs Maureen shut the door of David’s room quietly and stood a moment, breathing him in. She pulled open his blue curtains that she closed every night, and checked that there was no dust where the hem of the net drapes met the windowsill. She polished the silver frame of his Cambridge portrait, and the black-and-white baby photograph beside it. She kept the room clean because she was waiting for David to come back, and she never knew when that would be. A part of her was always waiting. Men had no idea what it was like to be a mother. The ache of loving a child, even when he had moved on. She thought of Harold downstairs, with his pink letter, and wished she could talk to their son. Maureen left the room as softly as she had entered it, and went to strip the beds.
Harold Fry took several sheets of Basildon Bond from the sideboard drawer and one of Maureen’s rollerball pens. What did you say to a dying woman with cancer? He wanted her to know how sorry he felt, but it was wrong to put In Sympathy because that was what the cards in the shops said after, as it were, the event; and anyway it sounded formal, as if he didn’t really care. He tried Dear Miss Hennessy, I sincerely hope your condition improves, but when he put down the pen to inspect his message, it seemed both stiff and unlikely. He crumpled the paper into a ball and tried again. He had never been good at expressing himself. What he felt was so big it was difficult to find the words, and even if he could, it was hardly appropriate to write them to someone he had not contacted in twenty years. Had the shoe been on the other foot, Queenie would have known what to do.
“Harold?” Maureen’s voice took him by surprise. He thought she was upstairs, polishing something, or speaking to David. She had her rubber gloves on.
“I’m writing Queenie a note.”
“A note?” She often repeated what he said.
“Yes. Would you like to sign?”
“I think not. It would hardly be appropriate to sign a note to someone I don’t know.”
It was time to stop worrying about expressing anything beautifully. He would simply have to set down the words in his head: Dear Queenie, Thank you for your letter. I am very sorry. Yours Best wishes—Harold (Fry). It was limp, but there it was. Sliding the letter into an envelope, he sealed it quickly, and copied the address of St. Bernadine’s Hospice onto the front. “I’ll nip to the postbox.”
It was past eleven o’clock. He lifted his waterproof jacket from the peg where Maureen liked him to hang it. At the door, the smell of warmth and salt air rushed at his nose, but his wife was at his side before his left foot was over the threshold.
“Will you be long?”
“I’m only going to the end of the road.”
She kept on looking up at him, with her moss-green eyes and her fragile chin, and he wished he knew what to say but he didn’t; at least not in a way that would make any difference. He longed to touch her like in the old days, to lower his head on her shoulder and rest there. “Cheerio, Maureen.” He shut the front door between them, taking care not to let it slam.
Built on a hill above Kingsbridge, the houses of Fossebridge Road enjoyed what estate agents called an elevated position, with far-reaching views over the town and countryside. Their front gardens, however, sloped at a precarious angle toward the pavement below, and plants wrapped themselves round bamboo stakes as if hanging on for dear life. Harold strode down the steep concrete path a little faster than he might have wished and noticed five new dandelions. Maybe this afternoon he would get out the Roundup. It would be something.
Spotting Harold, the next-door neighbor waved and steered his way toward the adjoining fence. Rex was a short man with tidy feet at the bottom, a small head at the top, and a very round body in the middle, causing Harold to fear sometimes that if he fell there would be no stopping him. He would roll down the hill like a barrel. Rex had been widowed six months ago, at about the time of Harold’s retirement. Since Elizabeth’s death, he liked to talk about how hard life was. He liked to talk about it at great length. “The least you can do is listen,” Maureen said, although Harold wasn’t sure if she meant “you” in the general sense or the particular.
“Off for a walk?” said Rex.
Harold attempted a jocular tone that would act, he hoped, as an int...
遥远的呼唤:探索内心世界的旅程 小说背景与核心主题 本书是一部深刻探讨人性、失落与救赎的文学作品,故事围绕着一个看似平凡却内心波涛汹涌的个体展开。它并非讲述宏大的历史叙事,而是专注于个体在面对生活巨大转折时所做出的选择及其带来的深远影响。 故事的主角是一位名叫阿瑟·潘维克的(Arthur Penwithick)的退休船长。阿瑟常年生活在一个被海雾和习以为常的日常琐事所笼罩的英格兰康沃尔郡的小镇上。他的生活,用镇上的话说,是“一成不变的、可靠的,如同潮汐一般精准”。然而,这份平静的表象下,隐藏着二十年前的一场悲剧——他与唯一的儿子迈克尔(Michael)之间那道无法弥合的鸿沟,以及妻子玛丽(Mary)多年来压抑的情感。 故事的转折点,源于一封来自遥远疗养院的信件。信中传来了一个令人震惊的消息:艾琳·麦卡勒姆(Eileen McCullam),一位阿瑟生命中几乎被遗忘的旧识,正处于生命垂危之际。艾琳是阿瑟年轻时一位青梅竹马的邻居,两人曾分享过童年的秘密,但命运最终将他们引向了不同的方向。 突如其来的决定与旅程的开端 面对这封突如其来的信,阿瑟内心涌起一股强烈的、近乎非理性的冲动。他本可以拨打一个电话,或者驱车前往。然而,他做出了一个惊人的决定:他要步行去探望艾琳。 这个决定,不仅仅是物理上的位移,更是一种精神上的逃离和自我审判。他拒绝了玛丽的陪伴,拒绝了任何现代交通工具的便利。他穿着一套不合时宜的旧西装,脚上是一双磨损严重的皮鞋,只带了一个简单的背包,便踏上了这条没有明确目的地的漫长道路。 这条路,从康沃尔郡一直延伸到苏格兰东北海岸的遥远城镇,全程超过六百英里。这不是一次有组织的朝圣,而是一次纯粹的、近乎荒谬的个人苦修。阿瑟的行走,象征着他试图通过身体的磨损来净化内心的愧疚。 旅程中的相遇与折射 阿瑟的旅程并非孤独。在路上,他像一块磁铁,吸引着形形色色的人,这些人成为了他内心独白和自我反思的镜子。 首先是那些纯粹的路人。他们对一个步履蹒跚的老人带着好奇、同情,有时是质疑的目光。有些人在社交媒体上看到了他的故事,将他浪漫化成一个“现代圣徒”,而阿瑟本人却对这种关注感到局促不安。他并不想成为英雄,他只是一个想在到达终点前搞明白自己到底是谁的普通人。 在旅途中,他遇到了一个名叫“影子”的年轻流浪汉。影子是一个对现代社会充满疏离感的年轻人,他跟随阿瑟走了几百英里。影子代表着年轻一代的迷惘与对意义的渴求。他们之间产生了奇特的父子般的情谊,影子以一种尖锐而诚实的方式,不断挑战着阿瑟对过去的选择进行粉饰的企图。 他还遇到了一位中年女卡车司机,她正处于婚姻破裂的边缘。在一次简短的交谈中,阿瑟无意间说出的一句话,触动了她内心深处对承诺的恐惧与渴望,这让阿瑟意识到,他的行走不仅仅关乎他的救赎,也在无意中成为照亮他人困境的一束光。 失落的幽灵与内心的审判 随着旅程的推进,阿瑟的内心世界逐渐被剖开。时间与距离的拉长,让他无法逃避对儿子迈克尔的记忆。迈克尔是一个敏感、有着艺术天赋的孩子,他因某种不为人知的原因与阿瑟产生了巨大的隔阂。阿瑟总觉得,他错过了儿子最需要的时刻,他用船长的严厉和传统父亲的刻板,扼杀了儿子内心深处脆弱的美好。 他不断地回忆起最后一次与迈克尔的争吵,那次争吵以一句伤人的话语告终,随后迈克尔选择了决绝的疏远。阿瑟不清楚迈克尔究竟身在何处,是生是死,是快乐还是痛苦,而这种“不确定性”成了他行走的最大驱动力——他必须到达艾琳那里,因为只有在那里,他才能找到一个可以停下来,坦然面对自己失败的理由。 终点:不仅仅是到达 当阿瑟终于抵达苏格兰的那个小镇时,他已经面目全非:皮肤被风吹得粗糙,身体疲惫不堪,但眼神中却多了一种沉静的力量。 然而,真正的考验在于会面本身。艾琳·麦卡勒姆已经因为疾病而变得虚弱,她的记忆也有些模糊。这次重逢并非小说家所描绘的那种戏剧性的大团圆结局。他们的对话是零碎的、充满未尽之言的。艾琳带来的信息,并没有直接解答阿瑟所有的问题,反而揭示了更多关于他们共同过去的遗憾和错位。 最终,阿瑟意识到,旅程的意义不在于艾琳能给他一个“答案”或“赦免”,而在于旅程本身已经完成了对他的重塑。他不再是那个被困在自己生活惯性中的人。他学会了倾听,学会了接纳自己的不完美。 主题的延伸 这部作品巧妙地探讨了“家”的定义。家不仅仅是砖瓦构成的居所,更是情感联结的所在。阿瑟的步行,是从“外在”的行走,转向对“内在”领土的重新丈量。他行走的方式,是对现代社会快节奏生活的一种温柔抵抗,它提醒读者,真正的疗愈往往需要时间,需要肉体的参与,以及对沉默的耐心。 小说以一种极具克制和诗意的方式,展现了人性的脆弱与坚韧。它没有提供廉价的安慰,而是引导读者跟随阿瑟的脚步,去体验那种在孤独中寻求连接、在疲惫中发现自我的深刻体验。阿瑟的“朝圣”,最终指向的,是他与自己和解的那个隐秘角落。