What book are you reading now?

This is a fantastic book. Some people seem to criticise it for such banal reasons as 'nothing much happens' and 'holden doesn't learn anything at the end of the book'. But this is to miss the point entirely. This is a book about the disillusionment of the teen generation in the post-war era. It is about struggling to find an identity when you are at the liminal stage that is your teens, not a child, but certainly not an adult.

This book is a meditation upon the virtues of childhood, and of adulthood, but the immense drawbacks that come with both. You lack knowledge and experience as a child, but you seem to lose idealism and innocence as an adult. This is about the struggle to reconcile the two stages. Holden is stuck between - he simultaneously holds up his little sister as a beacon of perfection, and talks of wanting to live on his own away from adults, and of wanting to be 'the catcher in the rye', and stop children from growing up, whilst simultaneously chatting up girls, almost hiring a hooker, and trying to convince everyone that he is in fact 'grown up and mature' - something he claims to despise.

This isn't a book about events, although the events of the book are certainly interesting; it is a book about a phase in one's life, about looking at adults through a child's eyes, and childhood with rose-tinted spectacles. It is a classic because one can entirely sympathise with Holden's sense of despair, whilst simultaneously recognising that he is desperately immature, somewhat hypocritcal, and leaving behind the childhood he wishes he could preserve.

The image of time is prevalent in the book - the stasis of the museum, the perfect memory of his brother Ally, and so forth - all are images that show Holden's longing for time to stand still in a world he feels is going too fast for him.

Altogether, this book is amazing. It captures the despair and confusion of adolescence in a clear, concise, entertaining and also depressing way. Anyone who isn't moved by the scene at the merry-go-round is dead inside. This is no Dan Brown book, so don't be expecting a lightning fast plot driven by events - this is a superbly crafted analysis of the teenager. Five stars.

still stuck on Slaughterhouse-Five.