Lizbeth Gabriel's Reviews > The Catcher in the Rye

Noooooooo. Dear Behemoth and sweet Lord of Flies, nooooo. Reading this book was agonising. I mean I can understand teenage alienation, I can understand the context of the era this book came out and how unusual it was to use every day expressions and not pompous, flowery prose... But I hated the protagonist, loathed the writing style, cringed my teeth at the repetitive expressions, and was bored half to death by the plot. I felt like I was reading Twilight all over again but written by a teenage boy with depression, attention deficit disorder and a 200 word vocabulary who wanders around lost in a mental haze caused by too much drinking and smoking and not enough eating. It would have been on my DNF shelf if I didn't want to know why the author chose this title. Pretty much nothing happens in it; if you expect some kind of climax, brilliant plot twist or rewarding ending, don't hold your breath. Really, don't.
I can understand it's a love it or hate it kind of book and it may do it for someone else. I am sorry to say, it didn't do it for me.