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| The Catcher in the Rye | 
 enlarge | Author: J. Salinger
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy Used: £1.66
You Save: £7.33 (82%)
New (29) from £3.48
Avg. Customer Rating:  246 reviews
Sales Rank: 368
Media: Paperback
Edition: Revised edition
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.6
ISBN: 014023750X
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780140237504
ASIN: 014023750X
Publication Date: August 4, 1994
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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From Amazon.co.uk
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 16-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 haemorrhages 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. --Amazon.com
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| Customer Reviews: Read 241 more reviews...
 One of the best books I have read November 25, 2008
This book has it all, humour, anger and brilliant observations of life and people, that all of us can identify with.
The book is written in such an amateur style (but salinger knows what he is doing)that one has to warm to the character immediately.
Great Book.
It's just so real November 2, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
On a personal note, I only read this book a few months ago and I felt I could relate to a lot of what the young adolescent narrator is going through. Anyone who has been a teenager can.
Catcher in the Rye isn't a plot filled story; I wouldn't say a whole lot happens as such, but it's the way in which it's written and how the centeral character describes what he is feeling that makes this book so beautiful.
It's like you know this boy, Holden Caulfield becomes your friend as you read on. Reading the novel is like hearing a close friend telling you a story about what's been happening in their life. When it ended, I almost missed him and his dystopic views of the world; which makes me know I'll be reading it again and again.
It's upto you as the reader to decide how complex J.D Salinger's ideas for this novel were. I mean, if you want to just take the story as it is, you can, but if you want to put forward your own interpretations and symbolism of the events that take place, you can do that too and no one has the right to argue with you because no one but Salinger can say what the book is truly about. That's another thing that makes it such a personal book to every individual that reads it.
So, maybe it isn't dripping with plot twists and insanely complicated ideas, but it's such a "touchable" book, the character is so relatable and his story so understandable, that it has become one of the most captivating things I have, and very probably ever will, read.
Its such a goddamn phony world! November 1, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is great because Holden Caulfield is such an authentic voice and it is so funny and so sad too. Its hard to deny that most of what he says is true and hilarious for that fact. But in the end its just a bit depressing, even if his conclusions, which make you sad, are a bit wrong. Hey, Holden, (you wanna say) children are phonies too. His love for his little sister is pure (I always think she must look like Zuzu in Capra's Its a Wonderful Life), and is as touching as any in literature. And, yeah, where do the ducks go to in winter? Its a reasonable question.
The big pity is that instead of letting it stand and letting it/him speak for itself/himself, to whomever wants to listen, all these phonies turn up and want to smash the toy to show how it works. And then they go and write their thoughts on Amazon. How phony is that? But I don't give a goddamn. Once read, never forgotten.
 Overated October 9, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Boring, over rated book.
I, like many others, was handed this book and told that it was a life changing read. It was an utter load of rubbish.
I think the people who recommend this book are suffering with a bad case of the Emperors New Clothes.
I honestly didn't understand the praise.... September 25, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
So I read it again. As such it's the only book I didn't enjoy first time round (as a sixteen year old) which I have ever reread. Rereading as a thirty year old did not change my opinion.
The book has nothing of interest to say. The inane ramblings and tirades of a cynical and bitter little rich kid do not a good novel make. Holden doesn't appear to learn anything over the course of his journey and all I learnt over the course of 200 nauseating pages was that not all "classics" of literature warrant their place.
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