A review by chelseycatterall
My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff

4.0

I truly enjoyed this. Though the book hails to J.D. Salinger, it is really a story of Rakoff's coming of age, living in New York and working for one of the oldest agencies in existence. She spends her days at The Agency, dimly lit and filled with cigarette smoke, seemingly stuck in the 1920's even though the story takes place in the late 90's. Her evenings are spent in a freezing apartment with no sink where she lives with her narcissistic writer boyfriend, constantly longing for and missing her college sweetheart. I loved the book from the very first chapter, where Rakoff gets the job and shows up, amid one of the worst blizzards in New York's history, to find the office closed down for the day. She describes walking home in her modest heels and wool skirt, with the abandoned streets covered in snow; empty in a way New York rarely ever is. Through working at The Agency, and briefly getting to know the reclusive Salinger, finally reading —and being forever altered by — his work, Rakoff grows as a writer herself. I loved the descriptions of New York, and Rakoff's constant day-dreaming. She's naive and idealistic and everything many of us were when we were in our early 20's, and though she doesn't end the story a grown, changed woman, she's getting there. A pleasure to read!