The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky Book Review

Tittle : The Perks of being a Wallflower

Author : Stephen Chbosky

Released : February 1999

Pages : 213

Price : Kindle $7.12, Hardcover $14.27, Paperback $13.27,

Summary:

Charlie want his life to be better once he steps his foot as a freshmen.

The story begin with Charlie writing a letter for someone whom he believed is a good person. Charlie keeps writing letters to that person regularly and telling him what happened to him on his freshmen year. His school, his first dates, his family, mix taped, his life in drugs and sex world, The Rocky Horror Show , Sam, Patrick and the song in the tunnel, Bill and his English class and many more.

Charlie is introverted yet smart boy which having no friends in his freshmen. Having slightly traumatic events which lead to his life and characteristic.

Freshmen is stressful yet challenging for Charlie. He faces so many things in his freshmen. He tries to understand every single thing in his surrounding. The step by step of anti-mainstream growing up process is explained by Charlie.

Favorites:

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a Young Adult novel which could describing well how does it feel to having such a trauma in boy point of view. I mean there’s a lot of books which also related to trauma especially sex abuse but it mostly happened to girl. I always find it amazing to see something for another people perspective. I can feel Charlie so much. His struggle to be “normal”, his awkwardness, his recovering process which takes a lot of time described well by Chbosky. I can relate to Charlie’s character, the way he questioning all the things even the simplest hing which don’t necessary to be asked. Like why do people who love each other also hate each other? Or When he analyze a mother and his daughter at the shop and follow them. It might be weird for some people but trust me those people exist and that’s how their life is. Freshmen is not just about laughter, party, love and so on but there much more to deal with by people like Charlie.

Getting into the dark world full of drugs, sex, nor homosexuality don’t affect Charlie’s academic ability. He is good at writing but he doesn’t realize it. It always amaze me that Charlie is a good writer in his condition. Yet I realized someone told me that to be a good writer you just need to be broken, then beautiful word will just come up and braided into a paragraph.

Charlie’s family which unconcerned about his condition also can be found in reality. When some parents thought their children are weird just because they different. Without analyzing why on earth their children are different.

Rating:

5/5

Substantive Thought:

I always love the story which let the reader guess what happen to the character and it is one of those books which I am talking about. A lot of secrets here and it make the book interesting. Everyone almost having different thought about the ending of this book. Even though the movies was out and have it own perspective but reader still can analyze what happened to Charlie at last.

I love Charlie’s description. People might be don’t know whether people like Charlie does exist. Charlie resemble those minority people whom somehow cannot be understood by the society. The introverted, over — thinking. God I just can relate to it and cries for several times.

I am glad too that some people get inspired by this book. They made an account on tumblr which use to be the place for people sending letters to Charlie, anonymously. I think it help a lot for people who doesn’t have a place to share their situation,story, anxiety, and so on.

This is a tremendously amazing book and I recommend you guys to read it.

Have you read it? What do you think about this book?