‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ by Stephen Chbosky
I think I first heard about this book three or four years ago. I'd been hearing favourable reports from several girls in sixth form about what was then a little-known novel familiar only to a curious and culturally savvy few. A few years later and The Perks of Being a Wallflower is now something of a cult classic, and a movie adaptation headed up by Logan Lerman and Harry Potter alumna Emma Watson is slated for release next year. A month or two ago I found myself standing cover-to-face with the book in the local Waterstone's and decided that it was high time to satisfy my curiosity.
First published in 1999, though something of a 'slow burner' in gaining wider interest, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a short epistolary novel narrated by the mononymous hero, Charlie, a pensive and somewhat precocious high school freshman. The novel begins with Charlie detailing the suicide of a childhood friend in unusually detached terms, and also expressing his apprehension about starting high school. At the beginning of the semester he meets step-siblings Sam and Patrick, seniors who immediately take Charlie under their wing. Sam, who Charlie almost immediately falls in love with, along with her openly gay stepbrother, introduces the protagonist to an offbeat world filled with mix tapes, Rocky Horror, and partying in a lo-fi stoner fashion. Along with navigating an adolescence made up of coquettish cohorts and cocksure footballer types, Charlie also struggles with the loss of his beloved maternal aunt and the more recent suicide of his friend Michael.
One of the novel's key strengths is its effective use of the epistolary form. Each separate 'letter' allows the reader a greater insight into Charlie's conflicted though inquisitive mind, and as these letters address the reader directly it is quite possible to wholly lose yourself in the text. Not one of the sections is long enough to warrant boredom, and such short, snappy chapters mean that the book is one that you can dip into at your leisure. The narrator's clever observations and complete lack of self-interest render The Perks of Being a Wallflower a highly relatable read, which is perhaps the most important factor in a coming-of-age story about adolescence and its accompanying peaks and troughs.
I have to say, however, that I wish I'd read this book earlier, as I feel that much of the subject matter within would have resonated more deeply with my thirteen or fourteen-year-old self. And while seven years may not seem like an especially long time, it has certainly been that long since I truly felt like a teenager in the quintessential sense, so while at one point I may have found myself identifying with Charlie in a more positive way, my overruling feeling while reading large chunks of the novel was one of ennui. The many comparisons with The Catcher in the Rye (a work frequently alluded to by Chbosky) are certainly justifiable, though I feel that the former is a more universal read. Reading about the controversy surrounding this book in the United States also led me to expect something more grim and graphic, but I realise this is probably linked to my favourite book being American Psycho and my own twisted sensibilities rather than any of the book's own shortcomings. And in spite of all this, Chbosky's talent for communicating a giant, heartfelt sentiment through one short succinct sentence remains clear throughout.
Overall, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a short and satisfying read. It captures the true essence of that dizzy and often disorienting experience known as growing up, and it is therefore my opinion that the novel would be best appreciated by those who - much like the protagonist - are in their mid-teens. And who knows, in ten or twenty years perhaps I'll revisit the book and the nostalgia factor will kick in good and proper, spiriting me back to my own forgotten teenager-dom.
This piece was originally published on alisonlaurabell.tumblr.com in October 2011.