Books have the capacity to bring people together. I’ve read several
charming books exploring the ways that shared texts deepen friendships
and particularly recommend the Mother-Daughter Book Club series for intermediate readers. In 84, Charing Cross Road,
Helene Hanff shares a 20-year-long correspondence centered upon books.
Frank, her primary correspondent, finds them for her, and she reads
them. They don’t discuss the books’ contents at length, or at least he
doesn’t, and yet these volumes bind them together in a powerful way,
bridging the gap between two continents.
I stumbled upon the movie 84 Charing Cross Road
on Netflix last year, and in light of National Poetry Month, I thought
it seemed a good time for me to read the book that inspired the movie.
After all, Hanff is extremely passionate about poetry. The book is
simply a collection of just under 100 letters between Helene Hanff, a
New York writer, and Frank Doel, a London bookseller. Occasionally,
letters to and from other employees at Marks and Co., Booksellers, as
well as Frank’s wife Nora and a sprinkling of other acquaintances, work
their way into the book, but the real heart of the story is the
reserved, humble Frank, who, from Helene’s first letter requesting a few
hard-to-find books, works tirelessly to secure her desired volumes and
never charges her any more than he needs to.
Most of the letters
are well under a page in length; generally speaking, Helene’s are much
longer. She fills her letters with impressions of the books she has
received – sometimes glowing praise, sometimes stern rejoinders. Beyond
just the words, she is often awed by the craftsmanship of the books
themselves: “I just never saw a book so beautiful. I feel vaguely guilty
about owning it. All that gleaming leather and gold stamping and
beautiful type belongs in the pine-panelled library of an English
country home…”
On the other hand, it’s not at all uncommon to
find her missives peppered with words in all caps, and it’s easy to
imagine her pounding away at her typewriter in fury. She’s a fiery
woman, and it infuriates her to see poor editorial decisions hampering
her enjoyment of beloved authors. For instance, she lavishes disdain
upon an abridged version of Pepys’ Diaries that excludes some of
her favorite entries and scratches her head at a volume of poetry that
includes the complete works of both John Donne and William Blake. “Will
you please tell me what those two boys have in common? – except they
were both English and they both Wrote?” She also delights in scolding
Frank if he goes too long without sending her something. She “needles”
him endlessly, while he takes her jabs with good grace.
Frank’s
notes are polite and tend to be rather detached, though the warmth of
his gratitude shines through when he writes to thank her for the
packages she sends to the bookshop containing food that is scarce in
England of the 1950s thanks to rationing. He always comes across as
extremely appreciative. Additionally, though he always passes her
letters around to the other employees, once they begin writing to Helene
they make it clear that he treasures their correspondence and thinks of
her as his own personal pen pal. It’s charming to see his subtle wit
peek through as he gradually becomes less formal with Helene. One of his
funniest moments comes about halfway through their exchange, when he
announces, “Prepare yourself for a shock. ALL THREE of the books you
requested in your last letter are on the way to you and should arrive in
a week or so.”
“From where I sit,” Helene writes in one of her
letters, “London’s a lot closer than 17th Street.” She says this to
indicate that it’s easier to write to Frank for what she wants than to
walk all the way to a New York bookshop that probably won’t have it
anyway, and almost certainly not as nice an edition as Frank is all but
sure to find for her. But it also emphasizes the sense of intimacy that
develops between her and Frank, as well as his close circle of
associates and his wife. Yet physical proximity eludes her. There’s
never any talk from England of a visit to America; it doesn’t seem to be
within the realm of possibility. But Helene wants nothing more than to
come to London, and it’s apparent that Frank and the others want this to
happen as much as she does. At a certain point in the correspondence,
nearly every letter from London includes some sort of entreaty to come
soon, with the tone growing ever more wistful. Frank’s letter ten years
into their exchange seems particularly poignant: “We are all sorry to
hear that your television shows have moved to Hollywood and that one
more summer will bring us every American tourist but the one we want to
see.”
It’s often the case that reading the book makes a person
rather disdainful of the movie that followed, but in this case, I gained
a deeper appreciation for just how well-done the movie is. It
incorporates the majority of the letters in the book, trimming some of
them, while providing just enough in the way of dialogue and unspoken
scenes to give us what feels like a complete story. Of course, Anne
Bancroft’s zesty performance and Anthony Hopkins’ quiet gestures give us
a strong sense of Helene and Frank’s personalities as well. The book is
a wonderful record of a lasting correspondence, but it lacks any sort
of context or transitions between the letters, which, toward the end,
become ever more infrequent. Given the choice between the two, I would
actually first recommend the movie; it’s an incredibly faithful
adaptation with just a bit of embroidery to make the tale feel more
complete.
That’s not to say, however, that I don’t recommend the
book wholeheartedly. If you’re someone who loves “antiquarian” books or
the art of letter-writing, you’re sure to find it a rare delight.
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