84 CHARING CROSS ROAD
230 pages
Nostalgic step back in time. A book club favourite.
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BY HELENE HANFF
230 pages
Outspoken & ballsy New Yorker meets London’s stiff upper lip - and the entertainment begins! A book club favourite.
Take a nostalgic trip back in time to a period when international travel was difficult as well as expensive, communication slow and reliant on the written word. And life was not 24/7.
More of a memoir than a novel, this is an endearing book that pieces together a series of rediscovered letters by a New York author, Helene Hanff, whose correspondence with a book shop in London during the post war period form the story’s narrative.
Written between Helene and the staff of 84 Charing Cross Road, we are taken back and forth between London and New York where plenty of cultural gaffes make awkward but now funny reading.
Through the letters, a friendship across the Atlantic is born out of a love of books and Helen’s own fascination with London. Her letters are unintentionally direct and funny, as well as compassionate. A real memoir ‘of a different era’ makes fascinating reading (because there’s no fake news or spin).
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