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Title: Pay attention young writers. Study this book.
Review: Let's face it: if you're only going to write a handful of books in your lifetime, let one of them be The Catcher in the Rye, and let another one be Franny and Zooey. Billed by many critics as two stories I find it more fitting to describe the text as a novella in two parts. One-fifth of the way into Franny and Zooey, the narrator steps directly into the novel to establish, among other things, the narrative contract with the reader. In this section the narrator all but introduces himself as Buddy, the oldest living of the seven children of Bessie and Les Glass. Zooey and Franny Glass are the youngest of these children. This lucid contract with the reader belies the narrative complexities of the novella. The final scene of Franny and Zooey, while the siblings speak to each other on separate phone lines just one room away from each other, is one of my favorite, and one of the most moving scenes in all of literature.
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