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The Catcher in the Rye | 
 enlarge | Author: J. Salinger
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy New: £3.54
You Save: £5.45 (61%)
New (26) Used (22) from £3.05
Rating:  247 reviews
Sales Rank: 141
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
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New. Shipped from UK. Please check Product Details for Language, Delivery is usually 4 - 5 working days from order by Royal Mail,International Delivery is by Airmail.
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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 242 more reviews...
 A Matter of Love and Hate December 28, 2008
BeLa
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Twelve years ago, my history teacher in High School sang the praises of a book that, in his own words, every adolescent should read at some point.Three days ago, and twelve years later,Santa finally did what I hadn't in all those years,and brought me a copy of The Catcher in the Rye.
I read it in a couple of nights. The first night I felt like someone I had thought my friend had let me down in some way. I started to suspect that it might be the typical overrated classic.The boy starts a story from some place he's confined in, but he doesn't elaborate. He then starts the telling of what happened last Christmas, which eventually led to his being where he is. As much as I tried, I could find nothing especial there, just the boy and his school mates and troubles and the crazy decision of flee to avoid parental confrotation and an immature teen with a lot ot maturing to do. He most probably would end up doing something stupid and being caught and all. Perhaps it was too late. Perhaps I was too late, and should have read it just when Mr. Montejo told me to.
Yesterday night, I picked the book again. Sadly, more out of the respect I had been brewing for the last years than out of real interest, but I picked it anyway. And then IT happened.
At some point of Holden's account,everything just clicks. Where he was, why he was there, what was going on with him. So I had to read other's thoughts about this amazing character.
I wasn't really surprised at the bunch of negative reviews, and neither I was at the bunch which considered it a masterpiece. What really surprised me is that many of them, good or bad, seemed to miss something that to me was crucial to the story: that Holden is not the teenager boy going through the difficult task of coming of age and doing stupid things and leaving the innocence of childhood behind, as I had previously suspected and feared. But that his problem, his real problem, is deeper and more dangerous than that. That he is tired of everything and everyone, in serious need of help, immersed in a serious depression, inestable and anguished to a dangerous extreme.
When he first mentions his brother Allie's death of leukemia when he was 13, or how he broke all the widow glasses of their garage afterwards,he does it in an almost eerily casual manner. But later you realise that perhaps that day was the day Holden Caulfield started his race toward the very same precipice he wants to save those children of his dreams from. Unfortunately, as he says, there's no one big around to catch him.
It's not that this book leads to violent acts or has the power of perturbing minds. More like perturbed minds recognise what's really going on with Holden. That he's not only coming-of-age, but he's coming of age immersed in a depression no one seems to see or care about. When his sister confronts him, he ends up crying and clinging on to her like she's the only thing that can save him. Perhaps she is, and she literally saved him without knowing it.
Perhaps I'm in the minority, but as caustic and sad Holden's thoughts are, I don't feel his story is pessimist, but rather the tale of a catharsis that was both necessary AND urgent for him. He is conscious of many things about the world, but also about himself, contrary to many opinions I've read. And he has a good heart, and not an agressive nature. It can end well.
I wholeheartedly recommend this book, but with some warnings. If you need things happening all the time to feel there's something going on, this is not your book. If you expect a coming-of-age narrative, you won't like it either. If you are looking for different tones in the voice, you'll be dissapointed and find it lineal. And if you are an adolescent, I can't tell. You might or might not like it; you might or might not feel it.
As for me, I'm truly thankful for not having read this book when I was Holden's age. I wouldn't have liked it, and so I would have missed this amazing feeling I'm having today. The feeling of having been touched by something. It doesn't happens often, nowadays.
My apologies for the rant! :D
- BeLa
One of the best books I have read November 25, 2008
A. Lawrence (UK)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
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
Zoe A.
1 out of 2 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
Mr. S. J. Wade (United Kingdom)
1 out of 2 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
JMF (UK)
1 out of 7 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.
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