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| Catcher in the Rye | 
 enlarge | Author: J.d. Salinger
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Category: Book
List Price: £11.50
Buy Used: £9.50
You Save: £2.00 (17%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  245 reviews
Sales Rank: 241069
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 277
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.8 x 1
ISBN: 0316769533
EAN: 9780316769532
ASIN: 0316769533
Publication Date: July 16, 1951
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 240 more reviews...
 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 2 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
1 out of 2 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.
Loved it. September 18, 2008
I simply adore this book, I purchased it with To Kill a Mockingbird, as I thought it's always on lists of those books to read before you die, so why not I thought to myself. And of course, I'm not male and just out of my teen years, but I did relate. I disagree with the critical commets that some customers have said like the main character Holden 'should get over himself', I think most teenagers at Holdens age are slightly self obsessed and have the me againat the world attitude, even if they would care not to admit it, I definitely did have that attitude. And for a book that was written in the 1940's it certainly has aged well, it feels quite modern actually. The book doesn't really have a plot and it doesn't need it either, written in the first person narrative, Holden tells us the events set over only a few days, which occured a year ago. This is definielt a book worth re-reading, and this is from a person who really doesn't return to a book once it has been read.
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