If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross, please give me a kiss, I owe it a lot... -Hanff Helen
How many 20 years are there in life? In the long years, we communicated by letters... A modest gentleman in England spent 20 years collecting old books for a poor and down-to-earth screenwriter on the other side of the ocean - just because she loves books and is crazy.
Of course, this is what the readers feel. In reality, the little screenwriter is a customer who needs a mail-order service, and the English gentleman is a clerk in a used bookstore.
Even, the root of this book is not a love story. It is a "screenshot of WeChat exchange information" between buyers and sellers who have friendship, but it was called a letter back then.
It's just that, like many young people, I was moved by this book, mainly because I was able to feel the love for the book from beginning to end in the lively and coquettish letters and the solemn and elegant reply. And nostalgia, as well as the deep friendship between the two parties derived from it.
The little screenwriter has grown from love of books to Wu, and has always repaid those "friends who sold books to her". The British gentleman is loyal to service, and even for this friend of the opposite sex who has never met, he personally went to the countryside to search for her and help her complete the relationship. The love of the book.
In Britain after World War II, materials were scarce and life was hard. The sausages, meat and eggs sent by the little screenwriter at festivals, which are "expensive luxuries that ordinary Britons can only glimpse in the black market", but for many years, the corner of Charing Cross "Marcos and Cohen" A gift that six employees of the "Bookstore" can receive in their own hands.
That friendship has been condensed in the joy of the family and the cheers of the children... Because of you, our life has a certain color that can be expected and satisfied.
This is the voice of the entire staff of the antique bookstore who "just popped out of a Dickens novel".
I can imagine the joy that came from the bottom of my heart.
The distance between them is no longer the distance between London and New York, but the distance between hearts and hearts, in every book that is packaged and sent.
The impoverished young screenwriter, living in an "old apartment with termites, crumbling, and no heating during the day", never forgets to put all kinds of The American food was sent to six friends across the ocean to share. This is something that only parents can do...
Therefore, it is the correspondence records of these gossip and discussion books that allow me to truly feel the temperament and even the expression of Hailian's giggling American girl, and that Frank, who has always been "British arrogance", has a solemn and orthodox speech pattern. Finally, I was slowly infected by the American girl, and began to have a subtle sense of humor.
Just like one of Frank's reply letters: when they are enjoying Hailian's food, they can only "toast to Hailian and Her Majesty the Queen"...
This is not only gratitude, but love overflowing from the heart.
There is a long correspondence record in the book, all about Hailian going to London to visit Frank and other six friends, which almost succeeded, because Hailian had a dental disease and had to see a doctor... So , the toll is gone.
Frank said: "37 Oakland Lane will always have a bed waiting for you, stay as long as you like". Hailian was full of excitement and yearning for this sentence... Then, the money for a ferry ticket blocked them for 20 years.
It was one day in 1969. Helena received a letter from Frank's eldest daughter, telling her that her father died of an acute attack of peritonitis last night... The "only person who knew me", just like this, the future was too late Saying goodbye is goodbye.
Perhaps, it was the translator's preface that delayed my emotional process. Before I started reading the book, I already knew the ending. So the news of Frank's death didn't bring tears to my eyes, but...
After Frank's death, his wife remarked that he was "full of knowledge", "used to read her letters so much", and even had "such a shared sense of humour" with Helena... which we never read in the letters arrive.
I think, Frank must have a love that has gone beyond friendship, so he hid it deeply, and did not express any words that crossed the line at any time.
And all book reviewers are opposed to finding traces of love in this book, because this is a collection of essays that witnesses the warmth of the world, and shows us a friendship that transcends the fetters of time and space. If this friendship is not preserved, there will be no historical record of pure friendship between men and women in the literary history of mankind.
But I always felt that it was really cruel that such a story of bereavement and disappointment ended abruptly in Hailian's loneliness... In fact, many people think so too.
This book was once made into a movie, and the name is very strange, it is called "Blood Shadow", I found a great film review on the Internet, called "Another Translation of Love", which said: " When love is displayed in another way, it is not torn away, but translated into a better language. The translators sent by God are called chance, responsibility, and Yunji , named Silent. There is another named Nostalgia."
Very well said, perfectly expresses what I mean. I would like to add two more words: the most touching love words are the kind of heart that has never started on the lips, but is already known to you. I have never seen you who "knows everything about me" in my life, but every long and silent night, I see your smile in the book... Can this relationship be a memory? It's just that I was lost...
There is such a book, which records 20 years of heart-to-heart exchanges, and people call it "the Bible for book lovers"; the location of the bookstore recorded in that book is called "the holy place for book lovers".
Its name is: "84 Charing Cross Street".
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