Recently I read the book The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, and I loved it. The book is told from the view of Charlie, a freshman in highschool who's always had social issues, has no friends, and generally just has a different way of viewing things than most people. Two seniors, Patrick and Sam, decide to take Charlie under there wing and introduce him to the world. The book is told through a series of letters to an unknown person, and we get to see Charlie develope through trial and error into less of a wallflower.
What I loved about the book is how real it feels. How every character has faults and good points, and how all there reactions are really specific to each character, yet they all make sense. Every character had a personality in this book, no matter how big or small of a roll they played. And I loved watching Charlie develope as a character through interactions with these other ones, like Susan who went out with Michael before he committed suicide that helped Charlie understand that people change. I also really loved his relationship with his English teacher, Bill seemed to be an out of house parent for Charlie and he cared about Charlie enough to consider himself a friend, of which Charlie never had very many.
The story telling in this book is also great, the letter format allows the reader to be skipped past days and weeks very smoothly, while still being able to spend a long time on possibly just a few small moments, like when Charlie, Patrick, and Sam felt infinate. It also really makes the story work, because you need to be able to understand Charlie's thought process which can so different from our own at times, and what better way to understand him than through his own writing? The entire book was what Charlie wanted to talk about, what Charlie wanted to tell us, not what an author was telling us about Charlie.
All in all a fantastic book, however I'd say it would be more for mature teens and older because there are many serious themes played out through the book, like sex, smoking, alchohol, and drugs.
This seems like a really interesting book! Does Charlie write the letters to himself? I like to read books written in letters, because it makes me feel like the author didn't write it, the protagonist did. Who's Micheal? Does Charlie end up making more friends, or does he just view the world through a different perspective? This sounds really good!
ReplyDeleteKate,
ReplyDeleteCharlie writes the letters to someone that we don't know who they are, although I have a pretty good idea of who having read the entire book and looked at the hints. He just addresses every letter "Dear Friend", preferring to keep them anonymous as well as himself.
Michael was a boy that Charlie used to be friends with who commited suicide, whose death Charlie seemed to be affected by a lot.
And yes, the book is really good!