When I was looking for something new to read, I fancied a change and being an avid Stephen King fan, I decided that I wanted to read a classic. So, I went onto the net and looked at the recommendations for the top classic literature and on every list I found this book: The Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger. It surely has to be good to be on every list...

Whilst I in no way hated this book, I cannot say it was overly memorable or a book that I would strongly recommend to a friend.

The Catcher in the Rye follows a troubled 17-year-old, Holden Caulfield, who has been expelled from yet another posh boarding school and is returning home to New York early for Christmas. Not able to go home to his house for fear that his parents will know about his expulsion, he spends a couple of days staying in a hotel, hanging out in bars, trying to catch up with friends and, at one point in the novel, hiring a prostitute. Holden is a complex character; he's intellectual yet at the same time very immature, he is surrounded by a city full of people yet at the same time he is extremely lonely, he fritters money without a thought yet he resents his wealthy lifestyle.

The fact that the book is written in the first-person with Holden as the narrator is, for me, the books biggest strength yet, at times, it's biggest weakness. Whilst the first-person narrative manages to convey Holden's teenage awkwardness and immaturity in a way that couldn't be achieved with a third-person style, his indirectness and use of chatty language and 1940s American slang can become extremely annoying, to the point where I would get fed up with reading the book. I think Salinger could have conveyed Holden's personality just as effectively had he toned down slightly the babbling of his narrative.

My other major criticism of the novel is that the character doesn't develop in any way; at the beginning of the novel Holden is awkward, immature and lonely and at the end of the novel he is still all of these things. I found myself desperately hoping that Holden would have some kind of epiphany and realise that he is immature and that this is largely to blame for his isolation - but this didn't happen. I was left with the feeling that I had just read 192 pages and the character had gone nowhere.

So, in conclusion, as a novel which aims solely to capture teenage angst and awkwardness through the eyes of a teenage boy, the book delivers what it promises and the feelings and experiences shown in the story will still be largely relevant to readers today. However, if you are looking for a novel where the character evolves and there is a resolve to his problems and some kind of moral or message, then maybe this is not the novel for you.