Missing Holden

How an older woman can write from the viewpoint of a 16-year-old boy is an exercise in enchantment sometimes. The story here is about discovering you have a terminal ailment and having parents who don't believe in allopathic medicine and falling in love at perhaps the best and worst time of your life. There are moments when the boy seems preternaturally wise but then that may have something to do with the fact that he's dying. In any case, using the parallel of Salinger's Holden Caulfield as a Holy Grail works well and I finished the book in one sitting. I love the fact that Salinger wrote and wrote for the rest of his life and refused to publish saying he was writing for himself (who else do we write for), and somehow that was at the back of my mind when going through Catcher, Caught (great title). Perhaps because the loneliness inherent in it was echoed in Daniel Landon, boy wonder for not very long. Also, some of us never really age in our heads, do we. That's a good thing when reading work like this when you need to understand youth, passion and waste.