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  • Published: 23 May 2019
  • ISBN: 9780241950463
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 160
  • RRP: $24.99

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters; Seymour - an Introduction




A haunting and deeply personal portrait of family tragedy from the much-loved author of The Catcher in the Rye

In May of 1942, Buddy Glass, second son of the eccentric Glass family, comes home on leave from military service. He is back in New York City to attend the wedding of his eldest brother, Seymour. But the celebration is overcast by a sense of suspended weight, a strange and muted dread. Perhaps everyone is aware, on some level, of what is to come. And in the years after the tragedy, Buddy is haunted by memories of Seymour, turning over in his mind everything that came to pass with his unhappy older brother.

In two communicating stories from his acclaimed Glass series, J. D. Salinger unfolds a subtle and poignant story of family tragedy.

  • Published: 23 May 2019
  • ISBN: 9780241950463
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 160
  • RRP: $24.99

About the author

J. D. Salinger

Jerome David Salinger, born New York City, Jan. 1, 1919, established his reputation on the basis of a single novel, The Catcher in the Rye (1951), whose principal character, Holden Caulfield, epitomized the growing pains of a generation of high school and college students. The public attention that followed the success of the book led Salinger to move from New York to the remote hills of Cornish, N.H. Before that he had published only a few short stories; one of them, A Perfect Day for Bananafish, which appeared in The New Yorker in 1949, introduced readers to Seymour Glass, a character who subsequently figured in Franny and Zooey (1961) and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenter and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Salinger's only other published books. Of his 35 published short stories, those which Salinger wishes to preserve are collected in Nine Stories (1953).

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