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The Perks of Being a Wallflower Paperback – February 1, 1999
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This is the story of what it's like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie's letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it puts him on a strange course through uncharted territory. The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite.
Through Charlie, Stephen Chbosky has created a deeply affecting coming-of-age story, a powerful novel that will spirit you back to those wild and poignant roller coaster days known as growing up.
- Print length224 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Grade level9 - 12
- Lexile measure720L
- Dimensions5 x 0.9 x 7 inches
- PublisherMTV Books
- Publication dateFebruary 1, 1999
- ISBN-100671027344
- ISBN-13978-0671027346
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
I walk around the school hallways and look at the people. I look at the teachers and wonder why they're here. If they like their jobs. Or us. And I wonder how smart they were when they were fifteen. Not in a mean way. In a curious way. It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report due on top of that. Or wondering who did the heart breaking. And wondering why. With the help of a teacher who recognizes his wisdom and intuition, and his two friends, seniors Samantha and Patrick, Charlie mostly manages to avoid the depression he feels creeping up like kudzu. When it all becomes too much, after a shocking realization about his beloved late Aunt Helen, Charlie retreats from reality for awhile. But he makes it back in due time, ready to face his sophomore year and all that it may bring. Charlie, sincerely searching for that feeling of "being infinite," is a kindred spirit to the generation that's been slapped with the label X. --Brangien Davis
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : MTV Books; First MTV Books/ Pocket Books Paperback edition (February 1, 1999)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 224 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0671027344
- ISBN-13 : 978-0671027346
- Reading age : 14+ years, from customers
- Lexile measure : 720L
- Grade level : 9 - 12
- Item Weight : 6.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 5 x 0.9 x 7 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #16,463 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #40 in Teen & Young Adult Coming of Age Fiction
- #683 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- #2,007 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Stephen Chbosky (/ʃəˈbɒski/; born January 25, 1970) is an American novelist, screenwriter, and film director best known for writing the New York Times bestselling coming-of-age novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999), as well as for screenwriting and directing the film version of the same book, starring Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, and Ezra Miller. He also wrote the screenplay for the 2005 film Rent, and was co-creator, executive producer, and writer of the CBS television series Jericho, which began airing in 2006.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Lawrence Truett, aka Ltruett at en.wikipedia derivative work: RanZag [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.
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(Know this book deals directly with many painful topics including abuse, suicide and violent bullying. It's not for "more sensitive" readers.)
Reading several reviews, I'm not surprised that some reviewers found the lead character, Charlie, "too sweet" and "improbable". In this, understandably, they miss Charlie's "diffferent" mind and more, his "different" way of being. I'm a psychotherapist, specializing for several decades in people for whom therapy has failed, often people, like Charlie, who've been hospitalized. And a dozen years ago, I discovered that maybe a quarter of my clients were in the autism spectrum, almost always AS/HFA -- often highly intelligent and able to relate to the neurotypically-structured social world, though relating "differently" and needing much more conscious struggling with the basics. After working several years with AS/HFA, I found these people had remarkable powers, and the usual "unable to relate or care" descritpion of autism just wasn't true in the ordinary sense. Most were neither uninterested nor uncaring -- in fact, quite the opposite. They desperately wanted to relate and, in some ways, they were over-caring, extremely sensitive to others. They related differently, not only to others, but to themselves and their world and, in particular, to language. Often not badly, but just very differently.
Writing in first person gives the author no place to hide. You MUST have an extremely interesting character, and you MUST know that character with ruthless clarity. Chbosky does, and he does so well that I suspect he may have a touch of autism himself. Or at least it runs in his family. Disclosure: after several years working with AS/HFA children, teens and adults, I noticed that I was unusually drawn to them; I could almost use that diagnostically. With that awareness, I figured out that autism runs in my family. And with that, the disease faded away and the differences began to shine through. Let me note a few points from "The Perks" to illustrate. Charlie's speech, thinking and relating, at first blush, seems to be almost child-like, more charcteristic of six years old than sixteen. He has an astonishing honesty, a naive not-understanding, and his use of words frequently has that unintended poetic feel of children. But look more carefully: Yes, there are situations he doesn't get in ways shocking for a middle-teen. But as he thinks about them and questions them, he often goes right to the heart-of-the-matter, and a heart-of-the-matter that's usually missed or forgotten by those of us, especially adults, who "just get it" and go on. Let me give an extended quote from the book's end:
"Later, [my friends, Sam and Patrick,] came by in Sam's pickup truck. And we went to the Big Boy just like we always did. Sam told us about her life at school, which sounded very exciting. And I told her about my life in the hospital, which didn't. And Patrick made jokes to keep everyone honest. After we left, we got in Sam's pickup truck, and just like Sam promised, we drove to the tunnel. About half a mile from the tunnel, Sam stopped the car, and I climbed in back. Patrick played the radio really loud so I could hear it, and as we were approaching the tunnel, I listened to the music and thought about all the things that people have said to me over the past year. I thought about Bill telling me I was special. And my sister saying she loved me. And my mom, too. And even my dad and brother when I was in the hospital. I thought about Patrick calling me his friend. And I thought about Sam telling me to do things. To really be there. And I just thought how great it was to have friends and a family...."
"But mostly, I was crying because I was suddenly very aware of the fact that it was me standing up in that tunnel with the wind over my face. Not caring if I saw downtown. Not even thinking about it. Because I was standing in the tunnel. And I was really there. And that was enough to make me feel infinite."
Starting out, it seems almost primitively black-&-white, until "And Patrick made jokes to keep everyone honest." In the context of all that literal-ness, it's startling. Charlie doesn't just note that "Patrick is telling jokes". Humor is often a struggle for AS/HFA, and so they need to work at understanding it. Through his work, Charlie is seeing not only Patrick's style of humor, but its function. Since AS/HFA often doesn't instinctively grasp "what" to do, they approach others and their world more basically through "why it's done" and "what it means". Because Charlie struggles to see the function of so much, he remains very much in touch with a stripped-down sense of that function's truth. Again, "And Patrick made jokes to keep everyone honest."
Then Charlie's "telling" returns to seemingly smple description. But read again: the description is less "simple" than "primary". And in many ways, this is the importance for us in AS/HFA relating. Attention to detail, of what simply "is", is consciously, clearly combined with an almost-primary way of relating to themselves, to others, to their world, as well as a primary relating to language. And when we see ourselves, our world, our lives through Charlie's AS/HFA "primary" lens, we not only see afresh. We see what is "primary", what goes to the heart-of-the-matter, what is the stripped down function, and so what is truly important. Not preachy, but very experiential -- "truly important" very much as-lived.
And Charlie winds up poetically pointing to primary experiences, connections and always-available potentials within and around us all: "And that was enough to make me feel infinite". And he got there through self and love and family and friends. Frankly, as a therapist who works most-of-all with severe trauma -- war PTSD, attachment disorders, sexual abuse, and deep grievings -- that's a short list, in those two paragraphs, of what gets lost in trauma and of what it takes to heal.
OK, I'm probably probing more than interests most potential readers. As you can see in other reviews, there are many levels to enjoy in this book. If you like, though, let yourself be touched by Charlie's "primary" description-plus-function. You may find it not only intriguging and moving, but healing. And who of us can't use a touch of healing now-and-then?
P.S. I read this on Kindle and, even on my laptop, I found it an easy read. It was particularly helpful because, now over 60 years old, I can boost up the print size, making reading more relaxing.
The writing in The Perks of Being a Wallflower probably would have been a struggle for me still, at least at the beginning. There’s a sort of Catcher in the Rye-ness to the book, but, unlike Catcher, there’s personal growth throughout the book. Perks is a full year in Charlie’s life, his freshman year of high school, and he learns a lot during that year. He grows emotionally and intellectually. For this reason, I’d say you should push through, even if you don’t like Charlie or his narration at the outset.
In case you do struggle, I highly recommend this audio version narrated by Noah Galvin. Perks is one of those books written in the way that someone talks, and so it lends itself really well to the audio format. Plus, Galvin sounds like he could be 15, which is actually a really difficult thing to find in YA audiobooks. He reads with great emotion too. This was really a perfect book for the audio format.
Charlie’s a really great and unique character, something which I couldn’t appreciate back when I tried to read it as a teen. At the time, I read a lot of romance, classics, and various adult fiction. YA wasn’t my thing, and I wasn’t used to reading about teen characters. Plus, Charlie’s a very unusual boy. He’s highly emotional and cries a lot, something I’ve never really done. I didn’t get him back then. Now, though, I’m so glad to see a book about a boy who cries, because our culture teaches guys to repress their feelings, and repression is not healthy. The novel’s all about learning to accept and understand yourself.
There were two things I didn’t like about Perks. The first is all the drug use and smoking. Realistic, sure, but also it made me uncomfortable that smoking wasn’t shown in an unflattering light. This is one of the things that I just cannot abide personally. Then there’s Sam. She’s a full-blown Manic Pixie Dream Girl, which is a term I really don’t use often. She’s got very little personality, aside from being fascinating, gorgeous, mysterious, and sexy. I’m pretty positive John Green read this book and was greatly influenced by it. Sam’s character just isn’t interesting to me, and whenever he went on and on about her, I was rolling my eyes.
The ending of The Perks of Being a Wallflower threw me for a bit of a loop. It was completely perfect and well-established by the text and at times I even wondered if something like that was coming. Still, the epilogue knocked my feet out from under me. I just am not used to epilogues containing any actual plot. Well, this one does and that plot packs a brutal punch. If you’re the sort of person who cries at books often, the epilogue should be called Sob City. It’s dark and painful, but also inspiring somehow, which is pretty damn impressive. It also brings the journey of the rest of the novel into stark relief.
I’m sort of at a loss for what to say about this one without spoilers, so I guess I’ll just exhort you to give this book more of a chance than teen Christina did. This is a YA classic for a reason.