Are there really two novels in Harold Fry? 
 Rachel Joyce broke through to fame with her debut novel, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, about an older man walking six hundred miles diagonally across England to visit the sickbed of a colleague from twenty years before, Queenie Hennessy. As Harold walked, we gradually learned more about his life, his unhappy marriage, his difficulties with his son David, and his growing friendship with Queenie, the accountant at the Devonshire brewery where he works. But all through his eyes. Now Rachel Joyce tells the story again through the eyes and memories of Queenie Hennessy, clinging on to life in a hospice on the far north-east coast of England. 
 So are there two novels in the story of Harold and Queenie? I would have to say no, not quite, although everything that Rachel Joyce writes is graceful and often quite moving. What we gain is a greater understanding of Queenie, who comes over as brighter and more varied than I remember from the previous book: a double-first from Oxford and a passion for the foxtrot make an intriguing combination of qualities. And we see deeper into the important things that she kept hidden before: her love-from-the-sidelines for Harold, and her unwilling involvement with his troubled son. Unfortunately, while I remember the broad outlines of the earlier book, and certainly its very special feeling, I have lost most of the details, so am not sure which things in this novel are genuinely new, and which merely the same events seen from the other side. 
 But the side you look from does make a difference. Harold had a literal journey; he went to new places and met new people; his story had a great deal of variety, tied to a clear timeline and goal. But although Queenie's carer says "You can lie in bed and make a journey too," it is not the same. Harold's contacts were fascinating, but it is difficult to work up a similar interest in the other people living and dying in the hospice; at best, they are half-characters. What is new is Queenie's life for the past twenty years, refurbishing a hut on the shore and building what she calls a "sea garden." Unfortunately, the faux-naif drawing of the garden in the frontispiece makes it look quite awful, and it is difficult to see why this was so important in her life. But the spirit of this unusual, inventive, and deeply loving woman does come through, and that is worth a lot. [Really 2.5 stars, but she is such a warm writer...]