Book of the Week #18: Perks of Being a Wallflower

This week’s book, to get back on track, is Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. I’m going to see the movie for this, so I thought I’d read the book first. Generally, I try to make that a habit.

Perks of Being a Wallflower is about a boy named Charlie, who is in his freshman year of high school. Charlie isn’t really close to anyone, and is shy and awkward. His only really close friend committed suicide just before the start of the book, so you really get the impression that he’s alone. He’s also not close to his family, and doesn’t feel like he can talk about his problems with them. The novel follows his experience and growth over the course of about a year. He ends up meeting a couple of seniors and they force him out of his comfort zone into new and exciting experiences.

Wallflower is overly long, and confusing at times. I found that I had to reread passages on occasion to really grasp their meaning. The story is told through letters that Charlie writes, so that might have to do with my confusion. It’s an odd way to write a book.  The book  also covers a lot of traumatic topics including abusive relationships and sexual abuse of minors, and it’s a lot to take in. However,  people seem to be crying a lot. Even though he had lots of reasons to cry, I feel like a lot of times I just wanted to yell at Charlie to suck it up. The way the writing is, it makes Charlie seem really detached from the events, so it was difficult to make the connect between his sadness and all these happenings.

I’m still going to see the movie, and I hope that live-action Charlie is better than  book Charlie, or it’s going to be terrible. 4/10.