Non-Fiction: 84, Charing Cross Road

 There is something to be said for a book so immediately engrossing that it can not be set down from the first page to the last. OK, ok, so this happens a lot in my world, although it seems as though I have precious little extra time to have this luxury.

Fortunately for me, then, this delightful book 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff is a brief 97 pages that chronicles the uplifting correspondance of Helene, a struggling script-reader/writer in New York City and a British used book dealer named Frank Doel (rhymes with Noel, thank you very much).

Over the span of 25 years, their letters become both witty in their sparseness and touching in their humanity and, despite never getting the opportunity to meet one another, their unlikely friendship serves as an inspiration we should all aspire to.

The art of letter writing, dying, even by the late 1960s when their correspondance ends, remains a source of delightful contemplation and joy. We lament its loss in society, the unfortunate moniker "snail mail" that belies the utter joy and simplicity that arises from everyone fortunate enough to reach into the mailbox and draw out tactile evidence of someone's time, effort and affection from beneath the stack of coldly impersonal bills and assorted detrius that collects in recycle bins everywhere.

Helene's tart American voice, her outrage and tenderness makes the reader catch their breath with laughter and with sentimentality. Her moral fortitude and kindness to the small used bookshop that sends her the rare English texts she covets so fiercely is sweetly gratifying.

Frank, too, in his polished British stoic and proper business attitude eventually gives way to reveal a tender and gentle man with a lively Irish wife and genuinely earnest coworkers who take it upon themselves to continue their own letters to Helene.

Distance and war time rationing does not diminish the power of one person to touch the lives of others. 84, Charing Cross Road, then, serves to remind us of the truth of Kobi Yamada's words: "One by one, we can be the better world we wish for"