Review // The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

by Stephen Chbosky

I guess that the best way to describe this book would be to say that it is a conglomeration of every life-changing thing that could ever potentially happen to someone in high school. It's an epistolary (ha, vocab word) novel written from sixteen-year-old Charlie's perspective to an unknown friend.

The book doesn't have problem/solution/beginning/middle/end plot, but it's not like it's supposed to. The story follows the path of the school year. Charlie recounts what happens to him on a day to day basis as he tries not to be a wallflower. "Participate" is the word Patrick always tells him.

Charlie's a really naïve fifteen-year-old, to the extent that at some points he seemed more like a sixth grader than a high school freshman. But at the same time that I say I can't believe all freshman are that innocent, there's something about Craig that makes you like him a lot. Like a Holden Caulfield or a John Green protagonist, Charlie is acutely observant and has thoughts that are well beyond his years and the way that he observes things just a little bit differently than everyone else does is what makes him such a great character. Something that makes me love any character is the way he or she notices tiny details about the world and people that others might miss. Despite Charlie's nerdy, somewhat socially awkward self, he's a very lovable guy, although the amount of crying he did over the course of one school year was pretty ridiculous.

Also lovable are his two best friends: stepbrother and stepsister team, Sam and Patrick. Sam and Patrick are like Janice and Damien from Mean Girls. In other words, "the greatest people you will ever meet." They cuddle Charlie under their motherly wing and teach him life lessons and stuff. I like that they're brother and sister, I thought that was pretty unique, and I loved their quirkiness. Where some secondary characters sometimes blend into the background and are just there for the sake of being there, Sam and Patrick are developed superbly and are as much a part of Charlie's life as Charlie is himself.

I had very mixed feelings about the end. It was extremely abrupt, and the denouement of the end of the school year happened, I thought, before the climax, which I'm not going to spoil. The climax was extremely shocking, and it fit with the story and explained why Charlie acted the way he did and why he thought in some of the ways that he thought. It explained a lot about his personality. But I hated the way they portrayed Sam.

-spoilers start here-

And this next part will be really spoilery, so scat if you've not read, but I really didn't want Sam and Charlie to be anything more than friends who just kissed the one time. And that's something that I don't like about stories: how a guy and a girl can never just be friends, they always have to like-like each other. I understood Sam's whole speech pre-kissing, but mleurghle, I just didn't like that scene. But minus the Sam + Charlie + Kissing + More scene,

-spoilers end here-

I thought the book was very energetic. It was able to deal with such a wide variety of topics, some subtle ones and some that were very outright (pg. 2, suicide), yet it didn't read like a soap opera or a reality TV show. And I loved it, and I recommend you pick it up. If you hate it, it's only 200 pages of your life wasted, and if you like it, there's a movie coming out later this year in which Emma Watson plays Sam. Eep!

❀ ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀ - 5/5