The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999) was recommended to me by a friend. I must say I bought the book without reading the description. I had no idea how deep and reflective the book would be. I probably wouldn't have purchased it if it wasn't recommended to me. Stephen Chbosky makes you laugh, feel sad, feel happy. I felt some things were awkward/uncomfortable to read. The more I read, the more I thought this book was simply going to turn out to be a tragedy. But the last few pages were able to put it all in perspective and leaves us with some good lessons. When you are reading this book, you become a wallflower.

The story is narrated by Charlie through letters. He is a freshmen in high school. Charlie is a wallflower. He sees things, he keeps quiet about things, and he understands. He is introverted and overly shy. Through the letters we learn of Charlie's friend who committed suicide, Charlie's experiments with drugs and alcohol, his first experience with a girl, his homosexual friend, and lastly (spoiler) molestation.

Clearly this a deep book with a lot of sensitive issues. Given this was written 12 years ago, I give props to the author for addressing these issues directly. Society still struggles with these today. Still, I don't think this book would satisfy everyone's reading standards. To close this post, I wanted to add that I googled The Perks of Being a Wallflower earlier today, and I saw they are making this book into a movie next year (starring Emma Watson).

My rating for The Perks of Being a Wallflower: 3 stars out of 5. Get it here!