Funny, insightful, sometimes sad and with some unexpected twists, this is a story that I won't forget. Harold is a bit like an old Forrest Gump, walking across England, remembering his past - only his past is rather ordinary, not at all like the infamous past of Forrest Gump. He is walking to see an old friend who is dying of cancer and he believes that his walking will save her. What makes the book interesting is his insights about the people he meets and life itself and humanity. Here is one of Harold's observations about a man who he met who shared his painful story with him: "The silver-haired gentleman was in truth nothing like the man Harold had first imagined him to be. He was a chap like himself, with a unique pain; and yet there would be no knowing that if you passed him in the street, or sat opposite him in a cafe and did not share his teacake. ... It must be the same all over England. People were buying milk, or filling their cars with petrol, or even posting letters. And what no one else knew was the appalling weight of the thing they were carrying inside. The inhuman effort it took sometimes to be normal, and a part of things that appeared both easy and everyday. The loneliness of that."
I enjoyed the story and highly recommend it.
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