Zooey is set shortly after the events of Franny in the Glass family apartment in New York City's Upper East Side.

Lane takes her to a fashionable lunch room, where Franny quickly becomes exasperated when he appears interested only in conversing about the minutiae of his academic frustrations.

Lane is less interested in the story than in keeping their timetable for the party and football game, though when Franny faints due to her mental state, he tends to her and postpones the weekend's activities.

The story concludes with Franny lying in the restaurant, her lips moving soundlessly, suggesting that she is practising the act of praying without ceasing.

In the letter, Buddy discusses their eldest brother Seymour's suicide several years previously and encourages Zooey to pursue an acting career if he is drawn to it.

He begins speaking with her and ends up upsetting Franny by claiming that her motives for reciting the "Jesus Prayer" are rooted in ego reinforcement.

Zooey feels guilty and retreats into the former bedroom of Seymour and Buddy, and reads the back of their door, covered in philosophical and religious quotations.

Jennifer Dunn, in an essay, mentioned that the “disparity between bright busy surfaces and inner emptiness” found in Franny and Zooey can be read as a metaphor for modern society.

[3] Carl Bode, in a University of Wisconsin journal, suggested that Salinger, while writing in Franny and Zooey that “the phoney and the genuine equally deserve our love,” found this as an answer to some of his own emotional problems.

[7][8] The book was very popular with the reading public, spending 26 weeks at the top of The New York Times Fiction Best Sellers list in 1961 and 1962,[9] but critics gave it mixed reviews.

[11] In 2011, Jay McInerney criticized the creation of the "self satisfied Glass family", but also stated that the story showed Salinger's "evolving beliefs".