Literary Fiction | Book Chatter

The Catcher in the Rye
By J.D. Salinger
Back Bay Books, 9780316450867, Nov 2018, 288pp.

The Short of It:

Read back in high school and re-read today for book club, and it’s just as wonderful as I remembered.

The Rest of It:

The Catcher in the Rye is of course, a classic. Everyone’s heard of it but I’ll tell ya, not everyone will love it. Why? Because Holden Caulfield is a piece of work! Tossed from private school for failing nearly all of his classes, Holden goes on a three day sabbatical from life. Delaying the inevitable, when he has to return home to his family for the holidays and clue them in to the fact that he has once again been kicked out of school.

Holden packs up his belongings, smokes a lot of cigarettes and ponders life as he hits bar after bar, considering his options. He’s underage but wise beyond his years so he goes from place to place making observations and hoping, longingly for people to spend time with him. He makes a few calls. Meets a few friends. Feels a bit homesick for his baby sister Phoebe, but mostly just flits from one interaction to the next, lost.

Holden is ALL of us. That’s what makes this such a good read. His insecurities are balanced by his overblown opinion of himself. Minus the bluster, the fancy hat, the cigarettes and booze and what you have is a teenage boy desperate for love. His loneliness screams at you while turning those pages.

Funny story. When I was pregnant with my first child, the name Holden was a frontrunner. We decided to go with Evan, instead. But after reading this classic again, my son really IS Holden in real life. I highlighted many passages because they could have actually come right out of my son’s mouth. I shared this observation with him and he wasn’t impressed or compelled to read the book. See? He is Holden.

What stays with me after reading this book is Holden’s voice. Salinger creates this living, breathing, sometimes seething Holden. He’s not the most well-liked guy but he can be charming, and often is, when not overcome with loneliness and doubt.

If you haven’t read this classic, or you read it long ago. I mean, I was 16 the last time I read it, I highly recommend you pick up a copy.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

The Mothers
By Brit Bennett
Riverhead, 9780399184529, 2017, 304pp.

The Short of It:

Rich and full bodied. Like a fine wine but better.

The Rest of It:

It is the last season of high school life for Nadia Turner, a rebellious, grief-stricken, seventeen-year-old beauty. Mourning her own mother’s recent suicide, she takes up with the local pastor’s son. Luke Sheppard is twenty-one, a former football star whose injury has reduced him to waiting tables at a diner. They are young; it’s not serious. But the pregnancy that results from this teen romance–and the subsequent cover-up–will have an impact that goes far beyond their youth. ~ From the publisher

I have had this book on my TBR list since reading The Vanishing Half. But it wasn’t until I listened to a podcast by From the Front Porch, that I really took note of The Mothers. This book has everything. Nadia is beautiful and flawed and caught in a world of hurt over her own mother’s suicide. Although she comes from a very religious family, and attends church on a regular basis, she doesn’t make the best choices when it comes to love and friendship.

Nadia navigates life in a precarious way. She is her father’s daughter, loyal to a point but when he chooses to remove the memory of her mother from her childhood home, she strikes out in ways that can only come from pain. Her deep need for belonging leads her to Luke but her relationship with Luke is complicated by life. Life, in the form of an unwanted pregnancy.

What does it mean to love and be loved? How does that look for you or me? Nadia’s definition of love swings from one extreme to another and yet she is wise beyond her young years, intelligent and driven. I won’t lie, there were times when I wanted to slap some sense into that girl but at the same time I wanted to just hold her.

The BEST part of this novel is the group of church ladies who function as a Greek chorus of sorts. Always chiming in, providing additional information and once or twice providing nothing but fodder to chew on. I did not grow up with a lot of women around me, I would have loved to have this group of women looking out for me. Nadia sees the value to knowing them, but also knows when to pull away.

This was an incredibly satisfying read. Anyone would be hard-pressed to not relate to Nadia in some way. Highly recommend.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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