Franny and Zooey

Franny and Zooey is a book by the American writer J. D. Salinger, published as a single volume in 1961. It contains the short story Franny and the novella Zooey, which had appeared in The New Yorker in 1955 and 1957.

The two of them are the youngest members of the Glass family, who appear in much of Salinger's writing. Franny is a college student, and the first part of the book takes place over a weekend visit to her boyfriend Lane in an unnamed college town.

What is wrong with her is that she has lost her patience with the selfishness and the insincerity she sees around her, and she is trying to find a way out of it through a form of prayer. The second part takes place shortly afterwards, in the family apartment in New York.

Zooey is her brother, an actor, and he is the person who tries to reach her. The book is built almost entirely out of conversation between them, and it is one of the pieces in which Salinger writes about the same family he returns to elsewhere.