Holden Caulfield is a teenager who got thrown out of his school, and this book is his narration of the day of the expulsion and the day after, in which he took a train to New York (where his family lives) and wandered for 24 hours. "The catcher in the rye" has no plot per se, it is more of a congested outlook on life, sprinkled with lots of cynism, through the eyes of a typical teenager. Holden perceives the modern world of adults as mainly "phony" and "corny", and desperately tries to linger on his passing childhood.

I wish I had read this book when I was in high school. It's harder for me to connect to it now, but I vividly remember many of my thoughts and views on life during teenagerhood as correlating with Holden's. Perhaps not in such exaggeration, but the eternal state of dragging boredom, coupled with the hate of phoniness and double-face of many people, certainly sound familiar. As they say "through the eyes of a child the truth is clear" - this is so true about "The catcher in the rye"...

I think this book is highly recommeded for everyone. Certainly for teenagers and for people having children in this age, but also for everybody in between.