FRANNY AND ZOOEY

by J. D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 14, 1961

Salinger's two books have created an audience which has made a fetish of every nuance of relationship to his own personal life and here -- in this cerebral exercise of the precision in communication there will be much to implement the saga. For this mirror -- held up to Franny and to her brother Zooey in a sharpening light -- reflects also their mother and their other brothers, and the two sections interlink as first Franny, and then Zooey, come into focus. For Franny, unable to make her football date understand her conversion by The Way of a Pilgrim and the Jesus Prayer, retreats to her home where Zooey moves in to her submission to her new concepts. In a series of near-monologues, which cover the freakish education of these two by their older brothers, their fame on a children's radio program, and the super-imposed intelligence and knowledge which has been their burden, Zooey re-aligns Franny's thinking and works towards a clarification that it is ""God's universe, not yours"", that there is no substitute for duty in life, and that, if it is in you to do something (here it is acting) then it is to be done to the utmost best. Without, really, any beginning -- middle or end- these fragments,- of a situation, of an issue, of an attitude, of life in a family,- build, but not to the affecting pitch of father, which may be a disappointment to lesser adherents but a seminar course for the serious analysis.

Pub Date: Sept. 14, 1961

ISBN: 0316769029

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1961

Categories: FICTION