The Ledger

By Becky Holland

★★★★★

Some books entertain us. Some books teach us. And every now and then, a book introduces us to people we wish we had known.

Tonight, at 2 a.m., I finished 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff, and I can confidently say this is one book that will not be leaving my bookshelf.

What makes this book especially remarkable is that it is nonfiction. These are real letters exchanged between Helene Hanff, a writer in New York City, and Frank Doel, a bookseller at Marks & Co. in London, over the course of two decades.

What begins as a simple request for hard-to-find books gradually becomes something much more meaningful.

The letters are not merely correspondence. They are conversations.

Through those conversations, readers get to know Helene, whose voice is direct, honest, witty, and colorful. We also come to know Frank, his wife Nora, and the employees who worked in the little London bookshop at 84 Charing Cross Road. What amazed me most was how quickly these real people became real friends in my mind. By the end of the book, I found myself caring about their lives as if I had known them personally.

As a lifelong reader, I was delighted by the bookish details scattered throughout the letters. One of my favorite moments involved a volume of poetry with pages edged in gold—a reminder that book lovers have treasured beautiful books long before sprayed edges became popular.

The book also reminded me of the warm, cozy feeling I get whenever I watch You’ve Got Mail. It is a story about books, certainly, but even more than that, it is a story about friendship, kindness, and the connections that can grow between people separated by miles, oceans, and years.

At just 97 pages, this is a quick read, but don’t mistake its size for a lack of substance. Within those pages are humor, heart, history, loss, joy, and one of the most touching friendships I have encountered in a long time.

I never expected a 97-page collection of letters to capture my attention the way Gone with the Wind did when I was 12 years old, but somehow it did. By the end, I wasn’t reading correspondence. I was spending time with friends.

Because for 97 pages, it made a woman in Cochran, Georgia, at 2 a.m., feel like she had friends in a London bookshop.

The very best books don’t end when you close them. They follow you home.