The Catcher in the Rye

Salinger, J. D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241950430 ISBN 13: 9780241950432

Publisher: Penguin, 2010

Witty, wise and bittersweet, The Catcher in the Rye is the ultimate American coming-of-age novel - a timeless classic

'If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.'

The first of J. D. Salinger's four books to be published, The Catcher in the Rye is one of the most widely read and beloved of all contemporary American novels.

'The handbook of the adolescent heart' The New Yorker

'He wrote a perfect novel and it changed US culture forever' Independent

'It was a very pure voice he had. There was no one like him' Martin Amis

'He was the poet of youthful alienation before youth really knew what that was' The Sunday Times

'His work meant a lot to me when I was a young person and his writing still sings now' Dave Eggers

Review:

Since his debut in 1951 as The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield has been synonymous with "cynical adolescent." Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in his sixteen-year-old life, just after he's been expelled from prep school, in a slang that sounds edgy even today and keeps this novel on banned book lists. It begins,

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them."

His constant wry observations about what he encounters, from teachers to phonies (the two of course are not mutually exclusive) capture the essence of the eternal teenage experience of alienation.

Review:

I liked it very much indeed, more than anything for a long time. (Samuel Beckett)