For Esmé – with Love and Squalor: And Other Stories

A collection of nine exceptional stories from the much-loved author of The Catcher in the Rye An American soldier has a strange encounter with an orphaned English teenager the night before he leaves for war. A four-year-old boy runs away in a dinghy; a missionary’s child is kidnapped by Chinese bandits. A honeymoon in Florida goes awry with tragic consequences. Including the first stories to feature Salinger’s beloved Glass family characters, this brilliantly varied collection offers a vivid introduction to the work of one of the most admired and widely read American novelists of the twentieth century. Witty, urbane and frequently affecting, For Esme – with Love and Squalor sits alongside Salinger’s very best work – a gem that will be passed down for many generations to come. %%% For Esme With Love and Squalor includes two of Salinger’s most famous and critically acclaimed stories, and helped to establish him as one of the contemporary literary greats. The title story recounts a Sergeant’s meeting with a young girl before being sent into combat. When it was first published in The New Yorker in 1950 it was an immediate sensation and prompted a flood of readers’ fan-letters. ‘A Perfect Day for Bananafish’ is the first of the author’s stories to feature the Glass family, the loveable and idiosyncratic family who would appear in much of Salinger’s later fiction. A haunting and unforgettable piece of writing, the story follows the eldest sibling, Seymour Glass, and his wife, Muriel, as they embark on an ill-fated honeymoon in Florida . . . %%% A collection of nine exceptional stories from the much-loved author of The Catcher in the Rye A military sergeant meets a young girl immediately before he leaves for combat, a four-year-old boy runs away in a dinghy, a honeymoon in Florida goes tragically awry, a missionary’s child is kidnapped by Chinese bandits. Including the first stories to feature Salinger’s beloved Glass family characters, this brilliantly varied collection offers a vivid introduction to the work of one of the most admired and widely read American novelists of the twentieth century. Witty, urbane and frequently affecting, For Esme – with Love and Squalor sits alongside Salinger’s very best work as writing that will be passed down for many generations to come. —- ISBN: 9780241950456