Helene Hanff's book, the epistolary "84 Charing Cross Road" was first published in 1970. It chronicles Helene Hanff's twenty years of correspondence with Frank Doel, the chief buyer for Marks & Co, a London bookshop.
(for my Chinese friend in Merimbula, here is the Chinese edition)
She first contacted the shop in 1949 and it fell to Frank Doel to fulfil her requests. In time, a long-distance friendship developed between the two and between Helene Hanff and other staff members as well, with an exchange of Christmas packages, birthday gifts and food parcels to help with the post-World War II food shortages in Britain.
Their letters included discussions about topics as diverse as the sermons of John Donne, how to make Yorkshire Pudding, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the coronation of Elizabeth II. Helene Hanff postponed visiting her English friends until too late; Frank Doel died in December 1968 from peritonitis from a burst appendix, and the bookshop eventually closed in December 1970.
Helene Hanff did finally visit Charing Cross Road and the empty shop in the summer of 1971, a trip recorded in her 1973 book "The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street".
but I'm sure you don't mind reading the French edition
The book "84 Charing Cross Road" was made into a beautiful movie in 1987, in which Hanff was played by Anne Bancroft, while Anthony Hopkins took the part of Frank Doel. I watched this popular movie a dozen times; what I had never seen was this earlier 1975 adaptation for British television, starring the long-forgotten Anne Jackson and Frank Finlay. I found a full-length copy of it while idly browsing YouTube after having raided the fridge for some crackers and Camembert on a sleepless night. If you want to join me, click on Watch on YouTube.
It's not an 'exciting' book in the usual John Grisham or John le Carré kind of way, which makes it a beautiful audiobook to fall asleep by - with a mouthful of crackers and Camembert - but beware, the following recording ends at 2:02:30, after which it repeats previous sections.
And here's a live book reading at the University Book Store in Seattle:
While I don't necessarily share Helene Hanff's antiquarian taste in books - of the many books she ordered from Marks & Co, I confess I only read "The Wind in the Willows" - I do share her passion for books. They are the only enduring reality I can be certain of till the day I die.
