I can't believe that I've never reviewed this before. I've read 84 Charing Cross Road three times since 2010 and I swear it never gets old. It's one of my all-time favourite books and it's so lovely and charming that it just can't fail to make you feel all squishy.
Plot summary: It all began with a
letter inquiring about second-hand books, written by Helene Hanff in New
York, and posted to a bookshop at 84, Charing Cross Road in London. As
Helene's sarcastic and witty letters are responded to by the stodgy and
proper Frank Doel of 84, Charing Cross Road, a relationship blossoms
into a warm and charming long-distance friendship lasting many years.
It's a very simple premise - an American reader exchanges letters with an English bookseller over the course of about twenty years. But it's oh so much more! Helene's quite outgoing and gently teases Frank, which he doesn't seem to know how to take at first. He takes longer to come out of his shell - quite reserved at first, eventually he's responding to Helene with little bits of chitchat and friendly asides himself. Their relationship is so subtle and so gradual and so lovely (I feel I may be in danger of over-using this word, but it sums up the book so well).
Did I tell you I finally found the perfect page-cutter? It's a
pearl-handled fruit knife. My mother left me a dozen of them, I keep one
in the pencil cup on my desk. Maybe I go with the wrong kind of people
but i'm just not likely to have twelve guests all sitting around
simultaneously eating fruit.
It's so lovely (see?). It makes it all the better that it's real. You know, this is the first time I ever considered that maybe it is actually purely fictional but then I decided that it couldn't be (and it would pretty much break my world if it was). I just think it's too... messy to be made up. Book relationships (even platonic ones) aren't this subtle. In addition, certain letters are missing, which you can tell when they refer to something mentioned in a previous letter... which you haven't read. Perhaps those letters were lost or not included due to the wishes of the family, but I just don't see why a fictional novel would bother to do that.
I have looked it up since - it's a true story *goes back to snuggling her book.*
I never realised just how long their correspondance lasted before - they exchanged letters on-and-off for more than twenty years. It seems so alien now, in a world where you can have a reply to an e-mail an hour after you sent it or just log onto Facebook and chat for four hours a night. Twenty years. No wonder it feels so special.
I have these guilts about never having read Chaucer but I was talked
out of learning Early Anglo-Saxon / Middle English by a friend who had
to take it for her Ph.D. They told her to write an essay in Early
Anglo-Saxon on any-subject-of-her-own-choosing. “Which is all very
well,” she said bitterly, “but the only essay subject you can find
enough Early Anglo-Saxon words for is ‘How to Slaughter a Thousand Men
in a Mead Hall’.
84 Charing Cross Road is my ultimate comfort book. Without sounding too dramatic, this book just feels like it's part of me - it's who I am. It's short but so lovely, and it restores my faith in humanity somewhat. The very existence of this book makes me want to cry - it's just nice, through and through.
Ahh Attachments. This is almost infamous now, for its creepy-in-a-not-creepy-way premise and lovely, witty e-mails. So naturally I only got round to reading it when everybody else has moved on to Eleanor & Park and Fangirl. Ah well, such is life. Anyway, Attachments is a wonderful book that I read pretty much in one sitting as I just couldn't bear to put it down.
Plot summary: It's 1999 and for the staff of one newspaper office, the internet is still a novelty. By day, two young women, Beth and Jennifer, spend their hours emailing each other, discussing in hilarious detail every aspect of their lives, from love troubles to family dramas. And by night, Lincoln, a shy, lonely IT guy spends his hours reading every exchange. At first their emails offer a welcome diversion, but as Lincoln unwittingly becomes drawn into their lives, the more he reads, the more he finds himself falling for one of them. By the time Lincoln realizes just how head-over-heels he really is, it's way too late to introduce himself. What would he say to her? 'Hi, I'm the guy who reads your e-mails - and also, I think I love you'. After a series of close encounters, Lincoln decides it's time to muster the courage to follow his heart and find out whether there really is such a thing as love before first-sight.
In case you didn't bother to read the above (I'm a big girl, I can handle your rejection), Lincoln's job is to read employees' e-mail. He keeps noticing certain amusing conversations between Beth and Jennifer and eventually falls in love with a woman he knows only through her e-mail. It's almost epistolary as it's told primarily through the women's inboxes, although it does switch over in Lincoln in standard narrative form.
This is the kind of book you just want to hug. It's really fun and light-hearted, just... happy-making, if that's a word. You close the book and feel like all is well with the world. For me, I think I liked the book so much because it felt real. This is a situation that could actually happen, and that's rare in chick-lit. There's no beautiful, quirky women setting up a cupcake shop that is successful over-night, no fairy godmother and no stereotypically gay best friend. It could happen and that's awesome.
Obviously the premise probably should seem a little bit creepy, but it doesn't at all. I think it works because Beth is a tiny bit creepy herself - she does basically follow him around in a completely stalkerish way. Saying that, who hasn't positioned themselves in a certain spot just before a particular gentleman walks by, or done something else vaguely creepy for love? Neither of their behaviour is beyond the realms of possibility. Either that, or I'm the only one and I've just outed myself as a crazy loser.
Lincoln doesn't sit there wanking over their e-mails; the focus is actually more on his life and he even goes so far as to acknowledge that stalking them would be inappropriate and weird. So shame on you Beth!
The ending is a little rushed and twee; it's the only part that feels like a chick-lit novel. It didn't annoy me on a grand scale as I was too high on happy fumes from the rest of the book, but it could have been better. I just couldn't put this down. I wanted to be reading it every single second that I could - it's a rare gem that can be this funny, but also this unique and this easy to relate to.
