Caz Morley

It just kills me when people say this story has no plot and that it contains so many irrelevant digressions. Because actually everything in it is relevant and everything is building up the picture, giving you new bits of information about Holden's life but also the life of his mind. There are few greater books for giving you an insight into how people (particularly young people, obviously) think from moment to moment. How your thoughts go off on a tangent, how memories fade and then pop back into your head at odd times, how you mistrust your own emotions and how you come to reappraise situations later that confused you at the time. Salinger makes all this look easy, like it was written with such off the cuff aplomb. Maybe it was, but it's still genius to have created such a complete and complex human being as Holden Caulfield is. Someone you feel you know intimately by the end of what is actually a rather a slim novel. I don't find Holden unpleasant at all. He's very funny and rather sweet natured when it comes down to it. I prefer Franny and Zooey, but Catcher is a small, pristine gift that keeps on giving.