Reviews

Letter from New York by Helene Hanff

malenabeamonte's review

funny informative relaxing medium-paced

4.0

onion_budgie's review against another edition

funny informative lighthearted reflective fast-paced

4.0

gruenlichst's review against another edition

emotional funny hopeful lighthearted relaxing fast-paced

5.0

dylankakoulli's review against another edition

3.0

God I wish Helene was still alive and writing books.

“Letters From New York” is a witty account of the adventures (though sometimes misadventures), of iconic New Yorker, Ms. Helene Hanff.

From 1978-83 we are given a series of monthly upbeat updates, joyous anecdotes and reflective rumination’s (oh, and a lot of dog appreciation too!)

This is a truly delightful little morsel of a book, and one I greedily gobbled up in a day!

3.5 stars

P.S yes I did buy her whole published back catalogue on ebay, and I have NO regrets.

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seriouslybookedup's review against another edition

funny informative lighthearted fast-paced

5.0

komet2020's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective relaxing fast-paced

5.0

 

Helene Hanff, scriptwriter and lover of literature and life, lived in New York City most of her life.  She achieved a measure of fame from her book "84, Charing Cross Road."   

In this book, LETTER FROM NEW YORK, Hanff shares with readers excerpts from monthly broadcasts she made to the UK via the BBC radio program Woman's Hour between 1978 and 1984.  These excerpts convey with amazing vividness and richness what living in New York was like for Hanff, who lived in a small high-rise apartment in the heart of Manhattan.    Where she lived was made up of an amazing microcosm of characters no reader will soon forget.

For instance, there was Hanff's friend Arlene, 20 years her junior, twice married and divorced, who lived alone "in an eight-room penthouse, with a bedroom suitably decorated for Marie Antoinette, and a living room positively alive with silver and china ornaments and glittering chandeliers."  She and Hanff were of the same size.  But unlike Hanff, who described herself as plain and mousy, Arlene was "black-haired, flamboyantly beautiful, and the last word in high-fashion chic." What's more: she has always lived a high-powered social life in which her job often brought her into contact with some of New York's most prominent people.   And, unlike Hanff, Arlene was no dog lover, something she made abundantly clear to Hanff, once firmly saying to her: "I don't want to hear about your dogs."  

Well, imagine Hanff's surprise when she had invited Arlene to a Thanksgiving Day dinner with friends, one of whom had brought along his old English sheepdog named Bentley.   Hanff hadn't told Arlene about this.   Here is how Hanff described the evening ---

"... Bentley - who is a huge, snowy mop of a dog - was at the door to greet [Arlene] when [she] arrived, wearing a flame-coloured shimmering blouse and high black stormtrooper's boots with six-inch heels. While RIchard [Bentley's owner] made the drinks, I was busy passing hors-d'oeuvres and checking on everything in the kitchen, so it was some time before I settled with my drink and glanced at Arlene.

"She was sitting on the sofa, Bentley at her feet sitting with his back to her and his head locked in a vice between her high black stormtrooper boots.   As Richard and I gawked at her, Arlene yanked Bentley's head back, peered down into his eyes - one brown, one blue - and informed him, 'I like you. You're a very sophisticated dog.' "

Arlene and Bentley struck an immediate rapport with each other.   So much so, that Arlene told him: "No dog has ever crossed the threshold of my penthouse... But you're special.   You're coming to my New Year's Eve party."  

And so it was that Bentley, sporting a bow tie at his neck, was among 50 guests at Arlene's penthouse on New Year's Eve for a breakfast that lasted from 2:30 AM until sunrise on New Year's Day.   The party was a resounding success, though in a somewhat unusual way.  A couple of days later, when Arlene phoned Hanff to discuss the party, this is what she said --- 

"People have been phoning all day.  Would you like to know what they talked about?  Never mind the gorgeous buffet table, never mind the champagne.  Never mind the great piano player.  Never mind I looked sensational.  All anybody talked about was Bentley.  Will you tell me how I can go bananas over a dog who took the stage away from me at my own party?"

For all its 178 pages, LETTER FROM NEW YORK was a delight to read. As someone who spent a few hours in Manhattan with some of my high school classmates on the Saturday before Easter Sunday in April 1982, this book evoked happy memories for me.   Any reader will want to experience New York City for him/herself after reading it.   

 

lissapdx's review against another edition

After I treated myself to 84, Charing Cross Road, it was only a matter of time before I reread Helene Hanff’s Letter from New York. This was the book in which I first encountered Miss Hanff—I don’t remember whether I bought it myself or was given it by someone, but I know I read it the year I moved to New York City, and it profoundly influenced my first experiences there. Helene Hanff taught me how to see the quirky and charming characteristics of a neighborhood; she enticed me out of my midtown office building during many a summer lunch hour and sent me scurrying all over Manhattan in search of streets and buildings she’d mentioned.

Letter from New York is a collection of radio transcripts: a monthly series of five-minute talks Miss Hanff for the BBC Women’s Hour, to share a slice of New York life with London listeners. She describes her building, her neighborhood, her favorite haunts in the city; she tells colorful and wry tales about the customs and opinions of her fellow New Yorkers. Delicious stuff.

Of all the talks, the story I remembered the most clearly was the one about the Shakespeare Garden. If you recall, I kept waiting for that part of Charing Cross Road and only realized halfway through that I’d got the wrong book.

It was in May 1979 that Miss Hanff told her BBC listeners about the corner of Central Park known as the Shakespeare Garden.

It was perched on a small hilltop and reached by high stone steps. It had flower beds blooming in spring, summer, and autumn, and a famous mulberry tree; it had a little stone moat for irrigation, with a small footbridge across it…The first park gardener I met there told me it was begun in the 1900s and was modeled on Shakespeare’s garden in Stratford. A later gardener said that the garden contained every flower mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays. He used to identify them, for ignoramuses like me. And he always pointed out the big mulberry tree grown from a cutting of a tree in Shakespeare’s own garden."

Unfortunately, as Miss Hanff explains, New York City had budget troubles and let the park gardeners go. The Shakespeare garden fell into ruin, such a depressing sight that Helene stopped walking past it; she couldn’t bear to see.

But a young couple who lived near the park couldn’t avoid it. They walked past the abandoned hilltop on their way to work on pleasant mornings. And so, on Sunday in May a couple of years ago, Peggy-the-schoolteacher and John-the-lawyer climbed the stone steps—with buckets of earth and buckets of water and garden tools—and began to dig. They worked all day; and the next Saturday they went back to the hilltop and worked all weekend.

A few neighbors and passersby saw them working and joined them. From then on, the volunteers worked weekends all spring and summer, and all the net spring and summer. And this year the garden is beginning to bloom again.

It’s not the Shakespeare Garden it once was. Peggy told me we can’t get English wildflower seeds over here. So the garden has no cowslips or harebells, and there’s no border of English roses anyore. But we still call it the Shakespeare Garden. And in a city of cliff dweller, it’s a small miracle to have Central Park’s only garden growing again, even if it’s not the English garden I loved.

But the story doesn’t end there. The following June, Miss Hanff had this to say to her BBC audience:

A year ago, I told you about the Shakespeare Garden in Central Park which had gone to seed when the city could no longer afford gardeners, and which a handful of New Yorkers had begun to recreate here. I said that the new garden could never be a real Shakespeare garden, since we couldn’t get English wildflower seeds over here. Well, a few generous Woman’s Hour listeners promptly rushed out and mailed us wildflower seeds, and I am now able to report that the cowslips and harebells are blooming, and so is the dyer’s work. And along the rustic wooden fence at the far rim of the garden—for the first time in ten years—the gold-centered, white English garden roses are blooming again. The Shakespeare Gardeners thank you, New York thanks you, and I can’t tell you wahat it meant to me, to see the long row of yellow buds flower into white roses again, like a like of small Phoenixes rising from the ashes. Thank you!

Most wonderful wonderful, out of all hooping.

(Originally posted at Here in the Bonny Glen.)

emilayana's review against another edition

funny inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing medium-paced

3.5

abookolive's review against another edition

4.0

Click here to hear my thoughts on Helene Hanff, this book, and all her other books over on my Booktube channel, abookolive!

aneumann's review against another edition

5.0

Helene is a wonder.