It's Christmas time and Holden Caulfield has just been expelled from yet
another school. Fleeing the crooks at Pencey Prep, he pinballs around New
York City seeking solace in fleeting encounters - shooting the bull with
strangers in dive hotels, wandering alone round Central Park, getting
beaten up by pimps and cut down by erstwhile girlfriends. The city is
beautiful and terrible, in all its neon loneliness and seedy glamour, its
mingled sense of possibility and emptiness. Holden passes through it like a
ghost, thinking always of his kid sister Phoebe, the only person who really
understands him, and his determination to escape the phonies and find a
life of true meaning. The Catcher in the Rye is an all-time classic in
coming-of-age literature- an elegy to teenage alienation, capturing the
deeply human need for connection and the bewildering sense of loss as we
leave childhood behind.