The Catcher In The Rye-J.D. Salinger

Yes i did just pick this book off the shelf in the library because of the Green Day connections. Happy? Right. Now we've got that cleared up...

This book is one of the most entertaining i have read, but not always because of the humour. It was written about fifty-odd years ago, so the language used is sometimes quite different, or maybe it's because i'm English(i spent about 15 seconds wondering what the hell a 'flit' was until i figured it out further on down the page), but it still sounds very real, especially as it's easy to imagine a 16 year old American that says 'Goddamn' every thiry seconds or more.
The charachter of Holden Caulfield is one that, unusually, you could imagine kind of hating them if you knew them, but once you know what's going on in thier mind the charachter becomes someone who you understand, and even relate to to a certain degree. I think most people know a young guy that seems to aquaintences to only care about sex and booze, or i do anyway. But the things he says and does sometimes, the little things that many teenagers, including me, find the need to pin down to madness or insanity, even if it's only jokingly, like his habit of pretending he's been shot and imagining that his side is bleeding, keeping his hand to it as if to conceal it, for absolutely no apparent reason exept for what he puts it down to, drunkness, and the time when he had been punched in the stomach.
You feel like a frustrating amount of imformation has been left out of the story about Holden sometimes. Although i suppose this adds to the realness. Sometimes people don't want to tell you something, and you never really know everything about a person.
But it ends kind of abruptly. He says that he doesn't want to tell you about his life at the time of writing, that it doesn't interest him. You get hints about things that have happened to him, but nothing more.

This review was written extremely quickly, so if some bits are wrong or i've put something that sounds stupid, and i've left a load of stuff out that i wanted to say anyway, it's not my fault. Blame my goddamn brother.

But i give it a 9 out of 10.
Posted on January 20th, 2007 at 03:02pm

Comments

Post a comment


You have to log in before you post a comment.

Site info | Contact | F.A.Q. | Privacy Policy

2024 © GeekStinkBreath.net
Register