Book Review: THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER by Stephen Chbosky

FACTS ABOUT THE BOOK

Title: The Perks of Being A Wallflower
Author: Stephen Chbosky
Publisher: Simon and Schuster UK
Price: $7.99
Pages: 231
Genre: Coming of Age, epistolary novel
Year: 1999

BACK OF THE BOOK

Source: Amazon

Charlie is a freshman. And while he's not the biggest geek in the school, he is by no means popular. Shy, introspective, intelligent beyond his years yet socially awkward, he is a wallflower, caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it. Charlie is attempting to navigate his way 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. But Charlie can't stay on the sideline forever. Standing on the fringes of life offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a deeply affecting coming-of-age story that will spirit you back to those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up.

MY THOUGHTS ON THE BOOK

So I really love the movie to this book. I fell in love with its trailer and just had to watch the movie in the cinema, but unfortunately my town's cinema didn't show it so I travelled with some friends to the next city just to see this movie. And it was definitely worth it. We felt infinite after watching it.

That was in November 2012.

When I was last in London I picked up this book in a bookstore and bought it because ever since I've watched the movie I've wanted to read the book and I also really like buying books when I'm in other countries, cities, etc. because they make for nice memories.

That was in May 2016.

Now flash-forward to May 2018 and I finally started reading this book! And actually just because there were only a few days left of the month after I've finished my last book (CARRY ON) and I wanted to squeeze in one last book and so I picked out the shortest one I could find.

But it took me longer to get through the 231 pages of this book than it did to get through the 521 of CARRY ON which I read beforehand. (click here for my review on CARRY ON).

Although it's been quite long since I've last watched the movie, I still remembered it very well and and could therefore compare the book quite easily to the movie. I must say that I definitely prefer the movie to the book. For me, the movie's soul is its music and it's just so much better to hear the music than to just read about it. And the key songs (at least for me) from the movie - "Heroes" and "Come on Eileen" aren't even mentioned in the book, so I was a bit sad about that.

I loved Sam and Patrick as I loved them in the book - although I guess I still loved them more in the movie because I'm quite biased when it comes to Emma Watson and I just adore Ezra Miller because of this movie.. - but I just wasn't really sure whether I liked Charlie in the book.

One reason why I haven't picked up this book for so long is because I always worried that it wouldn't be exactly uplifting and I'm never really in a mood to read a depressing story. I'm definitely into books that make me emotional but I don't want to read a book that makes me feel no positive emotion at all.

And I must say that this is definitely not a happy or uplifting book but a book that makes you think a lot because its main character thinks a lot and also a book with huge dark depths.

At first I thought that this is the perfect book to read in an English class at school because it tackles so many different important topics like depression, rape, sexuality, bullying, suicide, abuse, violence, abortion, etc. and that this book would lead to a lot of very interesting and vital discussions. And I still agree with this to a certain extent after having now finished the book... but I'm also more hesitant about it. I think that this could very easily trigger people for all the mentioned topics above and I personally think that abuse and suicide are portrayed a bit problematic in the book. I felt as if there was a bit of a romanticising of suicide going on in Charlie's letters which I didn't feel too comfortable with. Especially because the poem that Charlie gifted Patrick for Christmas felt a lot like a romanticisation of suicide and Charlie loved it so much which worried me a lot.

And I was also not okay at all with how the abuse was handled in this book. There's a lot of it written between the lines and it is revealed in a very subtle way and Charlie doesn't seem too reliable as a narrator when it comes to that. And I think that it's important to be critical as a reader when you read a book like this one because it's way too easy to stick too closely to the narrator - in this case Charlie - and to take his side when it comes to everything, but I think that it's quite fatal to do so in this book. It definitely depends on which point in your life you're currently at when you read the book and how much you can relate to Charlie. I just felt like I couldn't relate that much, which made me question his views a lot more.

I was quite thankful that Sam had this honest talk with Charlie in the end and told him to not be so passive and let everything be done with him because I also got the feeling that everyone, including his family and friends, just used Charlie and he just let it happen and didn't have any self-worth.

I knew before that this book was written in letters that Charlie wrote to a mysterious friend and I didn't really know what to think of this but I enjoyed it because it meant that there were no chapters, just those letters, and it was quite easy to squeeze in another letter - but still it took me way longer to read this book than I thought it would concerning its page length. I blame that on the writing style and also on the depressive character of the book. Sometimes I just wasn't really in the mood to read this because it felt too dark and upsetting.

What annoyed me a lot was the constant use of the word "Incidentally" to begin every other sentence with. At first I thought that since Charlie talked about the essays he wrote for his English teacher and that the teacher acknowledged that Charlie got better with each one, that the author also decided to improve Charlie's writing skills in the letters - but the "Incidentally" stuck throughout the whole book and bothered me quite a lot. As if there aren't any other words to begin your sentence with..

Since I've seen the movie, I obviously had all the actors in my head when I read about the characters and although they felt a bit different in the book, the actors still fit well. Just Nina Dobrev felt weird to me. But I guess that's just because she's so engraved in my mind as Elena and Katherine.

When I started reading the book I was most shocked about the fact that this book is already so old. I knew that the movie wasn't set in present time but I didn't know that the book was from 1999 and that it took so long to make a film out of it.

CONCLUSION

All in all, I must say that I am rather disappointed in the book. Although it had the beautiful quotes that the movie also had (but I think the movie added some more to that which I missed in the book) it didn't have the music in the way that the movie does and it also is way more depressing to read than the movie is to watch. The movie focuses much more on the positive sides of the story while the book lingers to much in the darkness for my taste.

And I think that the abuse story was handled quite poorly.

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