Storyline: 9
Suspense: 8
Humor: 9
Relatability: 10
Originality: 10
Overall: 9.2

Comments: A controversial classic, there's a reason this book is famous for consistently resonating with generations of disenchanted youths and social outcasts. Once publicly banned, this book is now often remembered as the one book from required high school literature that truly mattered.

 

Catcher in the Rye follows the wanderings of Holden Caulfield, expelled yet again from an expensive prep school. Holden wanders for 3 days through the streets of New York, meeting strangers and often ranting about his contempt for the fake and pretentious world and individuals he meets. Some encounters, like his date with the beautiful but almost aggressively air-headed and intellectually-empty Sally will resonate with any adolescent male who has struggled with the competing forces of a mental repulsion and physical sex drive. While this book tends to speak to men much more than to women, the idea of our society-rebuking protagonist will hold some attraction to any female loner who also feels jaded and chooses distance from others.

 

This book can truly be said to mirror the reader: the more substance and depth the reader has, the more will be reflected. For the thoughtful and insightful, the book is very subtly filled with symbolism and meaning. Far from the overwhelming symbolism of books such as The Great Gatsby with exhausted color symbolism and deliberately conspicuous symbols, Catcher in the Rye's meaningful symbolism (such as that Holden wonders sometimes where the ducks fly off in winter, as he too worries about where his life will lead) will speak to the reader that is mature and understanding enough to look for it.

Very few readers with a trying and depression-marked adolescence or with the insight and patience to appreciate the unusual literary style of this book will hesitate to recommend it, though the consistent embracing of this book by subsequent generations and rock-steady sales for decades speak volumes to the quality of this book alone.