The Catcher in the Rye.

Reading this book makes one wonder why in the world it was prescribed as a text book for some schools in the United States. Does the education board want all the students to imbibe the values that seem to characterise the main fella, Holden Caulfield? He comes across as a completely confused and slightly unstable teenager who cannot seem to come to grips with the world around him. He finds all the people around him "phony" and wanders from school to school (actually, he gets kicked out of each of them for poor academic performance), and is unable to accept what is happening to him. There are references in the book to an accident that was to have taken the life of Holden's brother, and it seems reasonable to expect that the untimely death of a sibling had a disturbing effect on the poor boy's psyche. By the end of the book it becomes clear that the boy has been institutionalised.
So what did I not like about the book? It is depressing. The whole world seems to plot against you when you are reading it. If an ordinary writer took up such a theme, we could bear it without too much complain, but if one who has honed his skill to such perfection chooses to make his main character as miserable as in "the catcher in the rye", the effects of the book on an ordinary reader would surely be devastating.
The character is complex, and though he goes and soaks himself in liquor in a bar and flirts with some women there, and though he hires a prostitute for the night, he tires to protect his little sister from the obscenities written on the walls in her school. She is the only person he seems to care about. The book shows him at the height of his innocence an also of perversion.
The name of the book is still a mystery to me. Apparently it has been called that since the boy hears some one sing the song "...in the rye" and mistakenly starts singing " catcher in the rye". It is still unclear why the book was named that.

In short... not recommended, unless you are tough enough not to soak up the mood of a book.