Review: Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I’ll start by saying I had absolutely no idea to expect from this little book. I had no concept of the plot, characters, or even general discourse surrounding it. I’ve never heard anybody talking about it. Somehow though, it’s still been in my peripheral for a while now, and I picked it up at a used bookstore sometime in the not-too-distant past. Its cover was blank save for the title, written in a scrawling handwritten black font on a white background. The spine was green. The mystery was well preserved until I started reading.

Franny and Zooey exists in two parts, each chronicling a day in the life of each of the youngest Glass siblings. Franny is a cynical college student who is becoming increasingly aware of her disdain for the education system and her professors, whom she vehemently complains about, arguing that they’re all basically inflated egos and nothing more. She also can’t seem to help from picking on her academically successful (but still airheaded) boyfriend and her unassuming roommates. Most of all, she is searching for a spiritual breakthrough, something that will free her from the emotional anguish she’s suddenly experience.

Zooey is a young actor who lives at home in New York City and can’t stop shooting rapid-fire verbal bullets at his overbearing mother. Yes, he’s brilliantly witty and undoubtedly hilarious, but he’s not a very nice person. He blames his older brothers (two are deceased and one lives slightly off-the-grid with his family) for making him a “freak” with the highly intellectual religious ideas they instilled in him and Franny as young children, when they all participated in a popular children’s quiz show as recurring guests. When Franny comes home from school distraught and confines herself to the couch for several days, constantly repeating a mysterious prayer under her breath, Zooey decides that enough is enough and confronts her in an emotionally charged climax of a conversation.

First things first: the dialogue in this novel is electric. J.D. Salinger is an absolute master at character-heavy plots, and on this account, Franny and Zooey should be considered his chef-d’ouvre. The way he uses italics to mimic the cadence and natural flow of speech not only makes the characters believable, but completely draws you in. There’s nothing stilted about Franny and Zooey. More than that, however, this is a shockingly profound read, especially for a book that only lasts around 200 pages and is mostly told through casual conversation. Spiritual suffering and desperation in someone as young as Franny is guaranteed to be fraught with dead ends and amateur, self-aggrandizing assumptions about the spiritual lives of others, and Franny is blind to her own massive ego, the very thing she finds fault with in everyone else. Even though he’s exasperatingly spastic and can’t seem to form a level-headed opinion on anybody to save his life, Zooey is ultimately the one who provides the spiritual breakthrough and brings Franny back down to earth.

I really did love this book and I encourage you to read it. 5 stars.