Love Bancroft & Hopkins, but love Helene so much more

books:


	• 84 Charing Cross Road Helene Hanff Random House Audiobooks, 1995 average customer review:based on 95 reviews
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highly recommended

A different type of love story

What a great movie this story made. I have watched the movie many, many times and have loved it every time. Now, I just had to read the book. The strange thing is that since I know what is going to occur at the end, my eyes become teared which makes the book difficult to read. Of course, that happens at certain moments in the movie as well. What a powerful story!

Love Bancroft & Hopkins, but love Helene so much more

I discovered this book on a dusty HS library shelf and as in Ms. Hanff's words, devoured it "all at once" not coming up for air or cigarettes. I also bought the VHS many years ago as soon as it came available. Since then, I've gone on to go out of head for Donne, Quiller-Couch, Austen, and Blake (though not anywhere near Donne!).

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84, Charing Cross Road

Interesting book that proves friendship can be created and sustained by people that haven't met.

A booklover's book

84, Charing Cross Road is a delightful collection of letters chronicling the 20-plus years' correspondence between screenwriter Helene Hanff and Frank Doel, bookseller of Marks & Co. It begins with a request in which Helene inquires after a series of books she wants to buy, saying that Barnes & Nobles's sells "marked up, grimy schoolboy" copies of the books she wants (my, how things have changed!), and continues through a friendship between Hanff and Doel in which the two never meet. As their lives grow and change, Hanff and Doel's friendship remains the one constant.

It's a special friendship, and Hanff is sharp-tongued and witty, making her a delightful narrator. I have a feeling that not all of the letters are preserved here in their entirety, but they're reprinted word-for-word, including Hanff's idiosyncratic punctuation--no doubt due to the fact that she typewrote all of her letters, but nonetheless, the letters show Hanff's personality and her rather abrupt way of corresponding.

It's a short book (just about 100 pages), but it's a special book, nonetheless, about a shared love of books. 84, Charing Cross Road is a must-read for any bibliophile. It's too bad that a woman on the subway accidentally tipped soda into my bag and all over my copy of this wonderful book...

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This Book Captured My Heart

In less than one hundred pages, Helene Hanff has given her readers a rare and special gift. Here in this delightful little book are the notes she exchanged with the employees of Marks & Co., a used-book store in England. Being fond of the old-fashioned yet still highly personal act of letter writing, and being equally fond of old books and used-book stores, Hanff seemed to have compiled these letters just for me. I doubt there is anyone who can read this book without experiencing a wide range of emotions complete with laughter and tears.

A lifelong letter writer, Helene Hanff studied playwriting at the Theatre Guild. She has written scripts for "The Hallmark Hall of Fame" and for "Ellery Queen." Her other writings include several children's books as well as articles for Harpers and New Yorker magazines.

Living and writing in New York City, Hanff finds herself unsuccessful in finding certain rare or out-of-print editions of books.

"Gentlemen:
Your ad in the Saturday Review of Literature says that you specialize in out-of-print books. The phrase 'antiquarian booksellers' scares me somewhat, as I equate 'antique' with expensive. I am a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books and all the things I want are impossible to get over here except in very expensive rare editions, or in Barnes & Noble's grimy, marked-up schoolboy copies."

So begins the opening letter dated October 5, 1949, and addressed to Marks & Co. at 84, Charing Cross Road in London. What follows on the pages of this book are the letters Hanff wrote to Marks & Co., and specifically to Frank P. Dole. Also included are the responses to her requests, mostly from Frank P. Dole. Through their twenty-year relationship, the two strangers become in some ways like family. Frank introduces his family to Helene in letters. She corresponds with the family as if they are her own. Knowing that in a time of rationing, certain items are not readily available to the residents of London, she takes great care to ship Christmas and Easter gifts to the store with plenty of eggs and meat for everyone there.

The final entry, dated 1969, brings the relationship between the bookstore, Frank Dole and Hanff full circle. The twenty years between the first and last notes are fondly recalled on the pages of this book.

These short notes, her requests for specific books, the monetary transactions that took place, and the solid relationships that developed allow the present day reader to glimpse a bit of the nostalgic... a gentler time when costs were lower, trust was higher, and people were more willing to be compassionate to complete strangers.

This is a truly delightful little book that has captured my heart. And, by the way, the fact that I discovered it while browsing through my own favorite little used-book store lends a special sort of appeal to it. I treasure the gifts within these pages--the gifts of self, of the written word, and the appreciation for the simpler things in life.

by Lee Ambrose
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

84, Charing Cross Road is a charming record of bibliophilia, cultural difference, and imaginative sympathy. For 20 years, an outspoken New York writer and a rather more restrained London bookseller carried on an increasingly touching correspondence. In her first letter to Marks & Co., Helene Hanff encloses a wish list, but warns, "The phrase 'antiquarian booksellers' scares me somewhat, as I equate 'antique' with expensive." Twenty days later, on October 25, 1949, a correspondent identified only as FPD let Hanff know that works by Hazlitt and Robert Louis Stevenson would be coming under separate cover. When they arrive, Hanff is ecstatic--but unsure she'll ever conquer "bilingual arithmetic." By early December 1949, Hanff is suddenly worried that the six-pound ham she's sent off to augment British rations will arrive in a kosher office. But only when FPD turns out to have an actual name, Frank Doel, does the real fun begin.

Two years later, Hanff is outraged that Marks & Co. has dared to send an abridged Pepys diary. "i enclose two limp singles, i will make do with this thing till you find me a real Pepys. THEN i will rip up this ersatz book, page by page, AND WRAP THINGS IN IT." Nonetheless, her postscript asks whether they want fresh or powdered eggs for Christmas. Soon they're sharing news of Frank's family and Hanff's career. No doubt their letters would have continued, but in 1969, the firm's secretary informed her that Frank Doel had died. In the collection's penultimate entry, Helene Hanff urges a tourist friend, "If you happen to pass by 84, Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me. I owe it so much."

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