Recently, I finished with reading of the book "The Catcher In The Rye" by J.D.Salinger(Jerome David Salinger) who was an American author, best known for this novel published in 1951.
To be honest, I didn't know about this book before but one fine day while searching bestsellers on Amazon.in, I came across this book and bought it without even knowing the meaning of "The Catcher In The Rye".
Basically, The novel is based on a story of a teenager "Holden Caulfield" who is expelled from Pencey, a private school in Agerstown, Pennsylvania.
The book expresses the feelings of anxiety and experience of being isolated from a group of people in teenagers. The character Holden has done with people and is sort of lonesome. He has many memories of his late brother Allie, another brother D.B. who writes screenplays in hollywood and his little sister Phoebe whom he is fond of.
The time he spent with Phoebe is expressed in well terms. Brother-Sister relations is what Holden thinks of. Since Holden is suffering the trauma of being a teenager, he simply wants to save innocence of his small sister, and hence he wants to be "Catcher In The Rye" that is the person who saves children from falling into adolscence.
Deep inside holden knows that growing up is tough task as he experiences it with his dorm mates and few girls with whom he tries to get chance with. And hence he simply wants his sister to not to suffer all this phase and be a child always and stay with him.
The constant mixed emotions, different thoughts that might cross over a teenager are expressed very well and you can remember the times when you were young and you had also same kind of thoughts in your mind that time. You would feel the past and smile thinking how did you transform from then to now.
One more thing I liked in the book is different type of language. I'd to visit Wikipedia Page for this book review to know the meaning of some sentences as :
- "Phony" –> superficial, hypocritical, and retentious
- "That killed me" –> I found that hilarious or astonishing
- "Flit" –> homosexual
- "Crumby" –> inadequate, insufficient, and/or disappointing
- "Snowing" –> sweet-talking
- "I got a bang out of that" –> I found it hilarious or
exciting
- "Shoot the bull" –> have a conversation containing false elements
- "Give her the time" –> sexual intercourse
- "Chew the fat" –> small-talk
Also, more to say, when I get attracted to beautiful girls some thoughts cross my mind and the best paragraph that described my thought was :
"She was really good. All you had to do was touch her. And when she turned around, her pretty little butt twitched so nice and all. She knocked me out. I mean it. I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they’re not much to look at, or even if they’re sort of stupid, you fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can." when Holden was dancing with two recently mate girls at bar.
Overall, I think this is the best book I read in many months because the thoughts and things Holden is expressing, I've felt the same in my teenager phase. All you have to get to know is the catch and the point author wants to express. Once you are through it, you will enjoy reading this book.
#GoodLuck#Smiles#GoodReads#Books :)
