"Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game all right - I'll admit that. But if you got on the *other* side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game."
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Holden Caulfield is an extremely sensitive and empathetic teenage boy. He's living through a sense of profound isolation and unresolved grief from the loss of a brother he idolized. He lives apart from his sister, Phoebe, one of the only people he truly likes. I found his character to be sympathetic because of how out of place he was. It brought to mind the idea from "Hello Beautiful"- it's sane to be insane in this world. Holden's rage and compassion commingled within him to result in help for others and harm to himself.

Despite this very strong character this book was really hard for me to get into. I think the tone was hard for me to place, and I didn't like the repetition of Holden/Salinger's phrases. At times it felt difficult to separate the author's identity from the character.

I didn't love how some really traumatic/difficult experiences felt like they were thrown at the reader, then vanished into the wind

(the suicide of James, Allie's death, the attempted assault by Holden's ex-teacher, mention of other assaults).

  It felt really unresolved to me.

I think that was my biggest challenge, that so many scenes and the book itself felt more like an unfinished thought than a supposed masterpiece. It's possible that was the intention, or that it was due to the original serialized nature of this text prior to being in novel form. That all may have gone over my head.

I can see how this would be meaningful in adolescence; as a survivor of CSA and someone who struggled with similar things I would have related to this deeply had I read it as a teen. Maybe I've just grown up/healed a bit too much for this to click well for me today.