Rumaan Alam: ‘Reading JD Salinger now is like running into that particular ex at a cafe’

<p>The US author on his early love of Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, the genius of Judy Blume, and finding perfection in Agatha Christie and Gustave Flaubert</p><p><strong>My earliest reading&nbsp;memory</strong><br>
I recall lying in the bath,&nbsp;age seven or eight, reading the final page of&nbsp;Judy Blume’s Starring Sally J Freedman As Herself, then turning to the novel’s opening and beginning again. Memory is untrustworthy, but Blume is a genius who has that effect on her reader.</p><p><strong>My favourite book&nbsp;growing up</strong><br>
We’re always growing up; we’re always choosing a new favourite. For me, once,&nbsp;this was Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy. Later I’d have said JD Salinger’s Nine Stories. Later, still, John Cheever’s Collected Stories, Lorrie Moore’s Self-Help, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, my favourite changing as I did. Maybe&nbsp;I’m finally old enough to understand that favourite is impossible to designate. Or maybe I’d say my current favourite is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/dondelillo">Don DeLillo</a>’s Underworld.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/sep/05/rumaan-alam-reading-jd-salinger-now-is-like-running-into-that-particular-ex-at-a-cafe">Continue reading...</a>