The Catcher in the Rye by by J.D. Salinger First published July 16, 1951

The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comme …more on Goodreads

Genre: Classic, Young Adult

Goodreads Rating 3.8 with 2,313,469 Ratings (as of 8/9/18)

First published July 16, 1951

Original Title           The Catcher in the Rye
ISBN                          0316769177 (ISBN13: 9780316769174)

Characters               Holden Caulfield, Robert Ackley, Stradlater, Phoebe Caulfield, Allie Caulfield, D.B Caulfield, Sally Hayes

Setting                      New York City, New York, 1949 (United States) and Agerstown, Pennsylvania, 1949 (United States)

Literary Awards     Teen Read Award Nominee for Best All-Time-Fave (2010), National Book Award Finalist for Fiction (1952)

My 200 word review:

I read “Catcher in the Rye” in high school and thoroughly enjoyed it. This time, I didn’t like it as much. I did not connect with the hero-narrator, Holden Caulfield, as much as I did when I was younger. I felt sorry for him in a way I didn’t during my first reading. I have not experienced the life that he did, going to boarding school, partying in New York, completely unsupervised and able to disappear for a few days at the age of 16. I have watched enough shows, Gossip Girl for example, to understand people growing up rich in NYC are often not supervised, given free reign of the city, and expected to survive. I kept wanted someone to get through to Holden, to make him understand he was still a kid and didn’t have to grow up so fast.

I still enjoyed the story but more for the writing style, not the story itself. Some people are put off by Holden’s vernacular but I found it appealing and think the story would be less powerful if written differently.

I would recommend young adults read this so they know they are not alone in the way they feel.