" I've never read a bio of Salinger & lord knows they must be difficult to write. Salinger is notorious for shunning any type of publicity or really any contact with the public for the last 40 or so years of his life. This bio is certainly exhaustive in how it looks into his work, describing & examining each of his published pieces very closely. It is perhaps a bit too deferential in its dealings with his personal life. While I do know a great deal more about him than I did before (for instance, I knew nothing whatsoever about his WWII service & it is extensive & impressive), it does gloss over some things that might have borne closer examination. His relationship with Joyce Maynard & her subsequent memoir are given all of 3/4 of one page of text. This had the unintended effect of making me think I ought to read her memoir, since their relationship isn't really covered here. This deference is the main sticking point with this bio, that & the lack of information available to anyone about Salinger (he destroyed or ordered destroyed many of his letters & no one close to him, including any of his three wives, has ever spoken publicly about him much), which made it difficult for the author. For hardcore Salinger fans only, I think (I still have my heavily highlighted copy of Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenter and Seymour–An Introduction from high school). "
— Christina, 1/30/2014