Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters

A haunting portrait of family tragedy from the acclaimed author of The Catcher in the Rye 'He was a great many things to a great many people while he lived, and virtually all things to his brothers and sisters in our somewhat outsized family. Surely he was all real things to us: our blue-striped unicorn, our double-lensed burning glass, our consultant genius, our portable conscience, our supercargo, and our one full poet...' These two novellas, set seventeen years apart, are both concerned with Seymour Glass - the eldest son of J. D. Salinger's fictional Glass family - as recalled by his closest brother, Buddy. 'The Glasses are one of the liveliest, funniest, most fully-realized families in all fiction' The New York Times