My Salinger Year

The much-loved, irresistibly funny memoir of literary New York which was an international bestseller and enchanted readers around the world – now a major film starring Sigourney Weaver and Margaret Qualley, My Salinger Year

‘Gripping and funny’ Observer

‘Like a literary The Devil Wears Prada ... An irresistible read’ Harper’s Bazaar

'Irresistible' Sunday Times

'Spellbinding' Guardian

After leaving graduate school to pursue her dream of becoming a poet, Joanna Rakoff takes a job as assistant to the storied literary agent for J. D. Salinger. Precariously balanced between poverty and glamour, she spends her days in a plush, wood-panelled office—where Dictaphones and typewriters still reign and agents doze after three-martini lunches—and then goes home to her threadbare Brooklyn apartment and her socialist boyfriend.

Rakoff is tasked with processing Salinger’s voluminous fan mail, but as she reads the heart-wrenching letters from around the world, she becomes reluctant to send the agency’s form response and impulsively begins writing back. The results are both humorous and moving, as Rakoff, while acting as the great writer’s voice, begins to discover her own.