Book Review: The Last Voyage of Mrs Henry Parker

Mrs P’s dizzying journey to find her husband, Dr Henry Parker, aboard the ship they’ve spent most of their lives on won’t make my top-20 list. Here’s why: the book describes a fair amount of fantastic destinations without actually taking you there. In fact, it offers the most minimal of snapshots for a book whose main character has travelled the world.

The Last Voyage of Mrs. Henry Parker by Joanna Nell might not have been my cup of tea, but reviews online seem to suggest that it's plenty of other people’s cup of tea. I like my tea fragrant, sweet and milky but found this particular tea a bit bland. It follows Evelyn Parker or Mrs P, as she’s affectionately known by two friends she makes on her final cruise, who searches for her husband with increasing difficulty as her mental state deteriorates more and more.

If you were to put this book in terms of a journey, it's the part where you’re not close enough to the end for it to be exciting and it's not the beginning where you’re all optimistic and blasting music. It's the middle part of a journey where not much happens and everything feels really slow. The big twist at the end was like arriving at your destination only to find it completely underwhelming and not what you expected.

I did enjoy how the book seemed to mimic Evelyn’s deteriorating mental state and how it dealt with her experience of dementia. And I thoroughly enjoyed her two friends, Nola and Frank, who, unlike the ship’s staff, went out of their way to help her and ease her confusion.