The Catcher in the Rye

"The Catcher in Rye" is the ultimate novel for disaffected youth, but it's relevant to all ages. The story is told by Holden Caulfield, a seventeen-year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Throughout, Holden dissects the 'phony' aspects of society, and the 'phonies' themselves: the headmaster whose affability depends on the wealth of the parents, his roommate who scores with girls using sickly-sweet affection.Lazy in style, full of slang and swear words, it's a novel whose interest and appeal comes from its observations rather than its plot intrigues (in conventional terms, there is hardly any plot at all). Salinger's style creates an effect of conversation, it is as though Holden is speaking to you personally, as though you too have seen through the pretences of the American Dream and are growing up unable to see the point of living in, or contributing to, the society around you. Written with the clarity of a boy leaving childhood, it deals with society, love, loss, and expectations without ever falling into the clutch of a cliche.

ISBN 014023750X   Pages 208 ISBN13 9780140237504 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 156 Publisher Penguin Books Ltd   Published in London Imprint Penguin Books Ltd   Previous ISBN 9780140237498 Format Paperback   Height (mm) 198 Publication date 04 Aug 1994   Width (mm) 129 DEWEY 813.54   Spine width (mm) 12 DEWEY edition DC20   Academic level General

The novel is nearly 60, its reclusive author nearly 90, and the book lives on. I've just reread it for the eighth or ninth time, and it is just as compelling, and as irritating, as ever. I too wish I could throttle Holden Caulfield, as he drones on and on and on about phoniness and life in New York City in the late 1940s. The tone of the novel grates, and yet there are lyrical passages, as, for example, when Holden muses on the ducks in Central Park. This breakthrough novel, one of the very first to be written from the adolescent point of view, is still a fine book and well worth reading. I think it is meant to be irritating, and compassionate. For adolescent readers, it is worth comparing with Maureen Daly's Seventeenth Summer, which came out four years before Salinger's novel. A question: Is all the fuss about trying to get Salinger to agree to an interview, and to a film of his only novel, really worth the time and effort? - John Vance Snow

No-one ever embodied the mind of a teenager in the 20th Century than Salinger. I read it for the first time as a thirtysomething. I winced, grinned, rolled my eyes and wished I could throttle Holden Caulfield as he moaned his way through the various trials of modern American life. By the end of the book, I loved him - as he was myself just a few years before.. - Allan Clare

A great book doesn't need lots of action, lots of jokes, lots of drama - it needs a sympathetic, likeable character/s with their own story to tell. Salinger does this so wonderfully in the creation of Holden Caulfield, as he tells his story, in his own language. It's not a story of great twists and turns but it's a story of life, it's a story to escape to and it's a timeless masterpiece. - e.beasley

 Read all reviews (8)

 Write a review