A review by lesley_watts
My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff

3.0

Despite it being 1996 in a literary agency in New York City, it feels more like the 1950s as a young Joanna starts her career in publishing with the company who represents the reclusive J.D. Salinger. There are no computers and it's typewriters and carbon copies all the way. This is a charming and reflective memoir and everyone can recognise the feeling of knowing nothing about anything that often accompanies a new job. There is loads of detail about clothes, lunches and detailed descriptions about New York locations (almost to the point of providing map coordinates), but the eccentric characters who work for the agency are well drawn and there are tantalising glimpses of the great man himself - Salinger or 'Jerry' as Joanna's boss gushes at him whenever he calls. There's also Don, Joanna's awful poser of a boyfriend who is a Communist and lives in a shabby apartment without a sink or decent heating and blabs on about the iniquities of the system whilst cadging off everyone and writing what sounds like an achingly tedious novel.