Franny and Zooey – J. D. Salinger

Ratings

Posted October 16, 2016 by ReadLit Team

Franny and Zooey – J. D. Salinger – 1961

Reviewed by: Lale Eskicioglu

The shelves bore iodine, Mercurochrome, vitamin capsules, dental floss, aspirin, Anacin, Buffern, Argyrol, Musterole, Ex-Lax, Milk of Magnesia, Sal Hepatica, Aspergum, two Gillette razors, one Schick Injector razor, two tubes of shaving cream, a bent and somewhat torn snapshot of a fat black-and-white cat asleep on a porch railing, three combs, two hairbrushes, a bottle of Wildroot hair ointment, a bottle of Fitch Dandruff Remover, a small, unlabelled box of glycerine suppositories, Vicks Nose Drops, Vicks VapoRub, six bars of castile soap, the stubs of three tickets to a 1946 musical comedy (“Call Me Mister”), a tube of depilatory cream, a box of Kleenex, two seashells, an assortment of used-looking emery boards, two jars of cleansing cream, three pairs of scissors, a nail file, an unclouded blue marble (known to marble shooters, at least in the twenties, as a “purey”), a cream for contracting enlarged pores, a pair of tweezers, the strapless chassis of a girl’s or woman’s gold wristwatch, a box of bicarbonate of soda, a girl’s boarding-school class ring with a chipped onyx stone, a bottle of Stopette–and, inconceivably or no, quite a good deal more. (page 75-76)

I liked this book very much. The story of Franny and Zooey flowed before me within just a few days. As early as the restaurant dialogue I knew that this was going to be one of my five star books. The descriptions are delightful, especially the inside of the bathroom cabinet and the living room. The writing is quite humorous in fact, take this footnote, for example:

* The aesthetic evil of a footnote seems in order just here, I’m afraid. In all that follows, only the two youngest of the seven children will be directly seen or heard. The remaining five, however, the senior five, will be stalking in and out of the plot with considerable frequency, like so many Banquo’s ghosts … (page 52)

Franny and Zooey are of course part of Salinger’s Glass family. Salinger uses the above footnote to give an account of where each of the Glass children are at this time in history.

As the narrator of the second part of this novella tells us, this is a love story, pure and complicated. If you read this book, you will want to (and you should) read Salinger’s Nine Stories which continues to recount the lives of the Glass children.

Salinger is a great story teller.

I bought this book in a used book store. It was in excellent condition. On the inside of the front cover, there is this inscription:

For Tara Xmas `88.

I’m not giving you this book for it’s [sic] religious content, even though that’s interesting. It just was really warming at the end.

So enjoy, my friend.

With love & illegibility,

Gabe

I thought the “not for the religious content” was interesting. How cool it is to see people’s notes in second-hand books.