Perks of Being a Wallflower

PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER

BY STEVEN CHBOSKY

A REVIEW BY ATHENA FROM ATHENA’S BOOK STACK

This book.

I’m not even quite sure what I think of it yet.

I finished it a few days ago, and I’m kind of, still thinking about everything.

Let’s start with something easy first.

The first thing I noticed was the style of writing. In Perks, Charlie, the main character, and the one writing, writes to a friend who isn’t named in the book, or not that I could tell. And Charlie just wants the person to listen and try not to find out who he is, saying that he used generic names.

And just reading that makes me wonder if his name really was Charlie or not. About how many times he must have rewritten the fake names because he accidentally used the real ones. I don’t know if I’m the only one who thought of it that way, but I’m almost certain I’m not.

But, yes. Charlie writes to the person from the beginning of his first year as a freshman in high school, to the end of it. And we aren’t quite sure what happens to him after that, and I suppose that that would just be up to our imagination.

So, Charlie is a very lonely kid and he doesn’t really makes friends easily. And to me, he was kind of a wimpy kid who knew nothing of the world until it was revealed to him in high school, about this thing called “going out” and such. It really surprised me how little he knew about these things, considering I knew about “going out” before freshman year, which I haven’t even started yet. I guess he was just one of those innocent kids, or something.

It’s a coming of age story, definitely.

But, at some point, Charlie finds friends who are older than he is, but they treat him just the same. He goes to parties, and hangs out at restaurants and other places. He goes to numerous showings of Rocky Horror Picture Show, and makes some friends there as well.

Although I’m trying not to reveal too much, Charlie does get into relationships, other than being just friends.

This book if for people who are in the middle of their teen years, at least 14 I believe would be acceptable, but it would really depend on the person because this book has a lot of graphic scenes not appropriate for young people. I know, I’m 14, but still, I want to give you a fair warning. This does contain swears, at maybe a medium-minimal amount. But I’m used to swearing, so I guess that may just depend.

RATING

Age group: Older teen (at least 14/15 years of age)

Writing style on a scale from 1-5: 3

Actual story on a scale from 1-5: 5