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A review by melanieritchie
My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff
5.0
I rarely share my thoughts on why I like a book. I'm not good at explaining why and I'm not sure my thoughts are helpful to others. Yet, maybe I'll start to share my thoughts, just so I can recall why a book was so great to me.
This book did not read like a memoir. Often I read a novel and have to remind myself it isn't real. This memoir was so beautifully written it felt more like fiction and I had to keep reminding myself it was real. I graduated university roughly the same time as the author. We shared many similar experiences. She gave me some insight into my choices and behaviours as a young adult. Maybe even some closure to painful experiences.
There were little parallels in the story that I really loved. We share the same favourite Judy Blume book. I even bought it to read on a car trip vacation.
I picked up the book at the library because of the title. How could I resist that? When I was 15, I first read Catcher in the Rye. Probably because it was mentioned in Sassy Magazine, or maybe a different novel I was reading. Or maybe because I'd read "For Esmé, with Love and Squalor" in english class and loved it. I got it out of my school's library. It had the carousel horse cover. I didn't like the book. At all. Then a year later I read it again, for some reason I can't recall. I loved it. I became a typical Salinger fan and read all his other works. Then in my twenties, I read about how he was a jerk and decided he was an eternal adolescent. Right around the time I realized that most of the authors/poets I loved were a-holes (cough, Cohen, cough). So I picked up this book, hoping to glean some insight into Salinger. It was such a pleasant discovery to learn about the world of Joanna Rakoff instead.
This book did not read like a memoir. Often I read a novel and have to remind myself it isn't real. This memoir was so beautifully written it felt more like fiction and I had to keep reminding myself it was real. I graduated university roughly the same time as the author. We shared many similar experiences. She gave me some insight into my choices and behaviours as a young adult. Maybe even some closure to painful experiences.
There were little parallels in the story that I really loved. We share the same favourite Judy Blume book. I even bought it to read on a car trip vacation.
I picked up the book at the library because of the title. How could I resist that? When I was 15, I first read Catcher in the Rye. Probably because it was mentioned in Sassy Magazine, or maybe a different novel I was reading. Or maybe because I'd read "For Esmé, with Love and Squalor" in english class and loved it. I got it out of my school's library. It had the carousel horse cover. I didn't like the book. At all. Then a year later I read it again, for some reason I can't recall. I loved it. I became a typical Salinger fan and read all his other works. Then in my twenties, I read about how he was a jerk and decided he was an eternal adolescent. Right around the time I realized that most of the authors/poets I loved were a-holes (cough, Cohen, cough). So I picked up this book, hoping to glean some insight into Salinger. It was such a pleasant discovery to learn about the world of Joanna Rakoff instead.