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My Salinger Year
- Author
- Joanna Rakoff
- Narrator
- Joanna Rakoff
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date
- 11 June 2026
- Run Time
- 8 hours 11 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
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 New York 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-paneled 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.
Critics Review
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Hard to put down ... Demands sympathy, admiration, and attention ... Irresistible
SUNDAY TIMES
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Intimate ... elegant ... graceful
Sunday Telegraph
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So gripping and funny, you feel sure she had only to twitch her nose to be back there
Observer
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Spellbinding ... You don’t have to be a Salinger fan to fall under Rakoff’s spell; I’m not and I did
Guardian
See more reviews See fewer reviews
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A warm, witty, occasionally sly piece of storytelling ... An affectionate love letter to a first job in an industry that in just 20 years has changed beyond recognition
Woman & Home
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In prose that is clear, precise and evocative, Rakoff renders her people and places touchably real
Independent
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Every young person who moves to New York with creative ambitions should read Joanna Rakoff’s wonderful memoir ... As transporting as the best novels
Adelle Waldman, author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P
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Anyone who has ever dreamed of a life in books will find much to love in Joanna Rakoff’s memoir ... Funny and knowing, it’s both an idiosyncratic tribute to Salinger’s writing and an affirmation of the power of books
Metro
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A memoir that manages to be dreamlike but sharp, poignant but unsentimental. Here is a book I’m going to have to insist you read immediately
Maggie Shipstead, author of Seating Arrangements
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A charming coming-of-age memoir that fizzes with youthful energy and bookish insight
Good Housekeeping
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Joanna Rakoff’s memoir of a New York publishing life, a fantastic book about being young and alone in a big city
Observer Books of the Year
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Think of her as the even more bookish Lena Dunham with a bit of Mad Men claustrophobia thrown in
Grazia
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A year spent in the orbit of a great writer gives rise to an elegant memoir
Sunday Telegraph
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Anyone who can remember the fear of feeling hopelessly out of their depth in their first job should get a kick out of My Salinger Year ... Rakoff’s prose is precise and often amusing
Evening Standard
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A beautifully written tribute to the way things were at the edge of the digital revolution, and to the evergreen power of literature
Chicago Tribune
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An affecting coming-of-age memoir. . . . Rakoff wisely – and deftly – weaves her Salinger story into a broader, more universal tale about finding one’s bearings during a pivotal transitional year into real adulthood
Washington Post
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Charming ... Glamorous ... Rakoff does a marvelous job of capturing a cultural moment ... What is most admirable is [her] critical intelligence and generosity of spirit
Boston Globe
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The loneliness of life after college [is] perfectly explained ... There’s something Salingeresque about her book: it’s a vivid story of innocence lost
Entertainment Weekly
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My Salinger Year describes its author’s trip down a metaphorical rabbit hole back in 1996. She arrived not in Wonderland, but a place something like it, a New York City firm she calls only the Agency ... An outright tribute to the enduring power of J.D. Salinger’s work
Salon
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A breezy memoir of being a “bright young assistant” in the mid-1990s ... Salinger himself makes a cameo appearance … The “archaic charms” of the Agency are comically offset by its refusal to acknowledge the Internet age
New York Times Book Review
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Joanna Rakoff
- Narrator
- Joanna Rakoff
- Duration
- 8 hours 11 minutes
- Release Date
- 11 June 2026
- ISBN
- 9781037207099
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Genre
- Memoirs, Narrative theme: coming of age, Autobiography: writers
Synopsis
Bloomsbury presents My Salinger Year, written and read by Joanna Rakoff. 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 New York Year‘Gripping and funny’ Observer‘Like a literary The Devil Wears Prada ... An irresistible read’ Harper’s Bazaar'Irresistible' Sunday Times'Spellbinding' GuardianAfter 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-paneled 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.
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