You could call Salinger's novel a story about a young man who struggles to live a normal life after the death of his younger brother. Even though, in a sense, that's technically true, it's a deeply inaccurate description of the nature of the book.
A better description would be that it is a book of page after page of funny, wonderfully-written prose that takes you right into the head and the heart of its compelling and oddly loveable narrator, Holden Caulfield. I say "oddly loveable" because he's quite the misanthrope. He likes almost no one, and rarely has anything positive to say. But Salinger constructed him in such a way that breeds a sort of instant familiarty. And the way that he thinks and talks is somehow just funny as hell. And you especially begin to sympathize with him when you learn that his younger brother, Allie, died a few years before the events of the novel, and it becomes evident that this tragedy probably stunted his maturity and is largely responsible for why he is the way he is.
And of course, Holden doesn't hate everybody. His fondness for the memory of his brother is the most beautiful and moving part of the whole novel, especially when Holden reflects on Allie's old baseball glove. Also, Holden is generally fond of children and particularly affectionate towards his little sister, Phoebe, who seems, in the end of the novel, to play a redemptive role in his life.
The Catcher in the Rye is both entertaining and strikingly beautiful; it is well worth anyone's time to read it.
