As Mrs Choffrut asked, here's my Catcher In The Rye's book review:
The
Catcher in the Rye
JD
Salinger, published in 1961
The Catcher in the Rye
is a coming-age-novel written by JD
Salinger. It takes place in two different places: Pencey Prep, a school in Pennsylvania and in New York. The main character is Holden
Caulfield, who is a sixteen years old teenager who has just been expelled from
Pencey Prep and who comes back to New
York, his home town. He tells the reader about his 4
day journey.
What struck me in this novel is the vividness
of Holden, who is going trough a moral and psychological growth.
I’ve immediately identified myself to him. All of the anecdotes in the book
seem real. For instance, when Holden is with “Old Spencer”, his history
teacher, and he’s "bored as hell" by Spencer lecture, it’s really vivid. This
novel is full of more or less unimportant characters, and the majority is phony. Holden hates phony people, and it’s one of
the most repeated words in the book. But some of the characters are moving as Phoebe, his 10 years old sister, who is
funny and sad at the same time. Even a character who is not present in the book
leads him in his reflections: Jane Gallagher. We understand that he’s in love with
her, he always thinks about her and especially when she has an affair with
Stratlader, his roommate at Pencey.
What you will love in The Catcher in the Rye, it is its vividness. The actor Edward
Norton said: “When you’re a kid, you read The Catcher in the Rye, you’re just like, oh my god, somebody
gets it”. To conclude, The Catcher in the Rye
is a revolution. When you read it, you can
think that it has been written nowadays. It was written in the 60s! This
book is famous because Salinger is one of the first to write this type of
novel: the Bildungsroman or the coming-age-novel. It has inspired lots of
novels of teenagers such as The Perks of being a Wallflower, Adrian
Mole... It is also sadly famous because of Mark Chapman and the 2 others
crazy murderers. The story is current, the vocabulary is rude, moving but also human. As Salinger say through Holden in the
beginning, it’s not “David Copperfield kind of crap” story. It is a real story. It could be an autobiography. And you
identify yourself to Holden. Finally, if you haven’t read it, run and read The
Catcher in the Rye.
The Catcher in the 
Hey, like your article but I think you made a mistake concerning the date of publication and that it's actually 1951 and not 1961... Hoxever it is still good and I agree with you on the fact that you can relate very easily on the character and his thoughts due to the writing that is to me brillant! (And also the idea that you do not really have the feeling that it has been written a long time ago.)
ReplyDeleteKeep on ;)
Perfect review on the book. I also really enjoyed this book, and I find really interesting the fact that I read it twice Under a year and had two significantly different takes on it. I think that as it tells the story of a teenager going (as you said) through pychological growth, it is really interesting for other teenagers (going through the same thoughts/ ideas/ states of mind) to read.
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