Jan 3, 2010

84, Charing Cross Road | Critical Overview

84, Charing Cross Road is the best-known of Hanff’s four titles published specifically for an adult audience. The work exemplifies an economic and literate prose style, Hanff’s hallmarks that have been traditionally celebrated by critics. Many critics, however, find the appeal of Hanff’s memoir to be a function of its Victorian charm. For example, Tho mas Lask, in a New York Times review, praised the work for its nineteenth-century response to the encroachments of a twentieth-century computerized society. Lask adds that the book is ‘‘an emollient for the spirit...