The protagonist of this book, Charlie, is one of the sweetest, most lovable, sincere and down to Earth book characters I have ever come in contact with. With every page, I only wished more that he was an actual person and not a creation of Stephen Chbosky's imagination (although I know there are people similar to him in spirit, some of which I know, and for that I am grateful.), flaws and all. Charlie narrates the story in a series of letters he is writing to an unnamed "Friend", for whom he expresses a deep trust. But really, it feels as though Charlie is talking to YOU, the reader, telling YOU in person about his experiences.
Charlie is an introvert who longs to survive high school. Not long into his freshmen year, he kindles a friendship with two seniors, Patrick and Sam, who become very near and dear to him. They show Charlie the different ins and outs of high school, and teach him lessons schoolbooks cannot. Charlie grows, physically and mentally, and learns to come to terms with the more difficult aspects of life-the ones that most people, especially introverts, want to run and hide from-and gain a deeper perspective and understanding.
I saw this book on a list of "challenged" books once, and I can see why. There are some drugs, sexual content and allusions to mental/psychological issues. However, these do not make the story any less compelling. If anything, I think we should take the time to question ourselves about such things in our society. If I had known from before that this had been a "banned" book and decided to stay away from it, I would've missed out on a story that impacted me hugely. As a fellow introvert, I still think of Charlie and his story from time to time, and ask myself when I am going to pick up that book again.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower Review by Courtney Justus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
