Rating: 
Summary: Must read
Review: I found this book to be loaded with unspoken richness and multi-dimensional characters, especially Mrs. Robinson. Charles Webb has created a very complex woman trapped in a situation that she regrets but can only try to hold on to because it is all she has. At the same time he has the main character, Ben Braddock, trying to find puropse in his life after he has already accomplished everything everyone else wanted him to. At 20 he finds himself out of college with neumerous prospects for graduate school but feeling lost and empty inside becasue he has never stopped to understand who he is and what he wants out of life. In this state of internal turmoil and kindred spirit, Mrs. Robinson, finds him and makes him an offer he tries to refuse but eventually cannot. In the end this offer causes everyones lives to be turned inside out. I reccomend this book to everyone.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice quick funny summer read
Review: I hope that when acceptance speeches were being made for the awards the movie version won, due thanks was given to Charles Webb for his novel. When reading it, I was surprised at how much of the movie dialogue was lifted almost word for word from the novel. Not to take anything away from Buck Henry and the other writers of the movie, but they had a terrific source from which to derive their screenplay.I wouldn't necessarily say the book is better than the movie (it isn't), but it does flesh out the character of Ben, gives him a little more background as to why he does what he does, and generally expounds upon his feeling of being trapped in middle class America. If you liked the movie, you might find the book interesting.
Rating: 
Summary: The Movie is Better
Review: I read this book before watching the movie and its a little surprising that they made a classic movie out of this.Dont get me wrong,its not that terrible but its not good either.Charles Webb should have gotten the credit for the screenplay because it seems like the screenwriters just copied the book.And its hard to imagine not seeing the great sceneries and hearing the songs by Simon and Garfunkel and Dustin Hoffman's dilemma about what his surroundings is expecting him to be.The movie focused on how upper class existence can drive you insane,even though everything seems beneficial to you,you tend to look for more meaning (like in Five Easy Pieces).But you cant really get that feeling while reading the book.The characters in the book are more annoying and almost every conversations in this book doesnt go anywhere.
Rating:
Summary: Every High School Grad Should Read this Book
Review: I think this book was poignant, and should be a high school's grad, last easy read. It helped me get over the high school graduation slump. It's so easy to get trapped into living off your parents money, and letting sexual relationships be your entire existence. It showed that even though this seems like an ideal way of living, it is an entirely futile lifestyle, and your better off just doing what is a more acceptable path, it's acceptable for a reason. I think people who are unattractive and not reasonably well-off, wouldn't understand how something like this could happen, but it happens all too often. Married People and Despairing Students seem to be two of a kind, and when they find each other they fill each other with hopeless and despairing intentions.
Rating:
Summary: Every High School Grad Should Read this Book
Review: I think this book was poignant, and should be a high school's grad, last easy read. It helped me get over the high school graduation slump. It's so easy to get trapped into living off your parents money, and letting sexual relationships be your entire existence. It showed that even though this seems like an ideal way of living, it is an entirely futile lifestyle, and your better off just doing what is a more acceptable path, it's acceptable for a reason. I think people who are unattractive and not reasonably well-off, wouldn't understand how something like this could happen, but it happens all too often. Married People and Despairing Students seem to be two of a kind, and when they find each other they fill each other with hopeless and despairing intentions.
Rating:
Summary: Adolescent
Review: It bears keeping in mind that The Graduate is a product of its time--the early sixties, when it became popular to ridicule middle class values and education, but no one seemed able to come up with workable alternatives.
Perhaps Benjamin Braddock's disillusionment with society can still be appreciated by those going through the same thing now, but Charles Webb's book never bothers to delve beneath the surface of his problems--or his lover Mrs. Robinson's, for that matter. The book is a series of sparse, frustrating conversations among people who can't--or won't--communicate with each other. Characters are simply types: the intelligent but depressed young man, the alcoholic seductive older woman, the completely oblivious parents. Even Benjamin's supposed true love, Elaine, is merely a pretty girl who is by turns insightful and idiotic, and seems prepared to marry whoever asks first. Perhaps Benjamin's obsessive stalking of her is meant to be the action of a savior who will protect her from a bad marriage and banal existence, but for anyone over the age of twenty, the real question is not what this couple is running away from, but what are they running toward? Idealism alone does not make a life, and when Elaine suggests to Benjamin that he will tire of her in about two days, she's probably right. The book has its funny moments, particularly Benjamin's awkward first night with Mrs. Robinson, but it seems, ultimately, as immature and lacking in substance as Benjamin himself.
Rating:
Summary: Did you know this was a movie?
Review: It seems Webb got into the writing mood by reading lots of Hemingway dialogue and descriptions in Camus' The Stranger or Robbe-Grillet, but then siphoned off all the existential impact of those writers. It's clear Benjamin is feeling alienated from something but it's unclear why - and unclear why we shouldn't be annoyed by him. It's also unclear why Elaine would find him in any way attractive, and in a lesser sense, why he would like her, other than as a rock to cling to.
On the other hand, this is an excellent template for the movie. Despite his lack of descriptive or psychological talent, I was impressed at how much translated exactly to the screen. Whole clumps of dialogue, jokes here and there. It seems at time the screenwriter had little work to do, but then a scene goes by that is completed and enhanced on celluloid.
The book is worthwhile only as an artifact, kind of a test write-through of the movie. I found it in turns frustrating and annoying and in turns enlightening in the way talented collaborators -- Mike Nichols, Dustin Hoffman, other talented actors, Simon & Garfunkel, scripter Buck Henry -- can raise a good premise into unquestioned greatness.
Rating: 
Summary: Too Easy!
Review: It's a simple book. It's not interesting to read, because each sentence is repeated many times. You can understand this book very easily. It's not written with many vomplicated words. The film is much better. Dustin Hoffmann as Ben is a wonderful star. But Mrs. Robinson is too pretty for him. She could have seduced much more interesting men. In the book the countryside isn't described. But the film has got a wonderful countryside like in Paradise. It's obvoious that there will be a happy ending. All in all the book is normal store book which you can buy at every corner. It's not a book for someone who likes complicated literature.
Rating:
Summary: It's what you make of it...
Review: People don't like this book because they don't like to think. It's mostly dialogue - like a drama, or a screenplay. The reader has to fill in the details. It's called active reading. Not that you can't read the book as a light read but if you're reading passively and expecting revelations, well, it's not going to happen. However, if you use the book as a basis for extrapolation of social comment, you may get what you are looking for.
For those of you with no imagination, don't read the book; see the film or better yet, the play. And for those of you with imagination, I recommend the same to enhance your understanding.
Rating:
Summary: Ridiculous
Review: The book is simply ridiculous. I chose it for reading because I wanted to try something simple after months and years of great classical literature. Anyway, you need to read "average" novels off and on in order to understand what tremendous value truly artistic novels have. I expected the book to be just plain, but "The Graduate" surpassed in its stupidity and mediocrity all the [inexpensive] novels that I've ever heard of, seen or read. The story is absolutely unreal, written without any other purpose than to provide an easy and [inexpensive] entertainment. Oh, there may be another use to that book. Its language is so simple that beginners in English may read it to learn a few new words and the rudiments of grammar. I suppose one can write such a book, but how can one be not ashamed to publish it?
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