Book Review: The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

The Perks of Being a Wallflower
*****

Well, this was an interesting book. It was so simple it was brilliant, kind of the way a lot of people viewed Forrest Gump. The book is set up in such a way that the main character, Charlie, is writing letters to an unknown recipient throughout the entire book. That's all it is. Letters, detailing what's going on in Charlie's world and what he thinks about it.

It centers around his friend Patrick, who is gay, and Sam, the girl he is in love with throughout the duration of the book. There are also a lot of letters about his family and Mary Elizabeth, a girl he dates briefly who likes him a lot more than he likes her.

It's obvious from close to the beginning of the book that there's something a little "off" about Charlie, but you can't really tell what it is. He does talk about the death of his aunt, which had a profound effect on him, but I'm not sure that accounts for what it is about him that seems so odd. Several times he is referred to as a "freak" in this novel but he doesn't seem to take offense to it. At times he appears to have a below average intelligence, but then he will write something so simple yet so brilliant and insightful that you have to wonder if he could possibly be below average. At one point, a teacher of his tells him that he is bright and brilliant, but the mere fact that he needs to be told this suggests that he doesn't recognize it himself and therefore, something is missing.

I could have chalked it up to a below average emotional intellect like a lot of geniuses have. But I don't think Charlie was a genius. And even though he didn't know how to handle a lot of things emotionally and he cried a lot, he also had some very deep emotional thoughts and actions so that didn't make sense either.

Toward the end of the book, I almost started thinking he was just a normal kid, but then something happens in the end that tells you that he's definitely not. I still don't know what's wrong with Charlie, but I'm planning on googling it to see if anyone out there has any ideas that make sense.

This is a really fascinating book with a lot of rich characters detailing a lot of the situations teenagers get themselves involved in as they go through their high school years. It is one of those books you will think about for a long time after you've read it.

There were parts where I laughed and parts where I felt really bad. It stirred up a lot of emotion and a lot of thought, which is the kind of book you don't see enough of out there.