The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

The Ten Minute Book Review,


An Immediate Response to a Freshly Read Book.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

I wish I could call my old student Rosy and tell her how much I loved reading this book. How much I adore Charlie and can’t stop thinking about him. But I’m phonophobic, so I’ll write it out and wait to see her in person sometime in the fall. This is one of the two books she really wanted me to read this summer. She wanted to know “what I think.”

I just love that. I’m in the “Isn’t it cool that anyone would care what I think?” stage, even though I’m an AARP card wielding literature lover, with credentials to prove it.

By the way, the other Rosy recommendation was John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars; you can read my sort-of review for that one too. If you care to.  I'll post it soon.

The first thing I’m thinking, ten minutes after reading the last line of Perks is, I wish I could share this book with my future students. This is unlikely to happen on any kind of a classroom-wide scale, however. If at all. Because? I know that no matter how lovely and important and even comforting I feel this book to be and more importantly believe it would be for many, many teens, I’m quite sure most parents would wish it banned, or at least discourage their children from reading it until they were fifty or so years old. Which is well past the years that Charlie, the protagonist, is describing in very honest and “Oh, did he really need to include that much information?” kinds of ways. Humorous, too. Wrenchingly sad. Squirmingly uncomfortable. Bingo! Wasn’t youth like that for most of us?

Bildunsroman. It’s a highly popular form of fiction because it attempts to explain, rather than ignore, many of the universal aspects of coming of age. Maybe not in a way that adults “get” or approve of. Rather, in a way that the young might find entertaining, and maybe even helpful.

The students whom I wish could read this book would be:

Gifted (or not)

Undecided

Experimenting

Wondering

Sad

Friends

Brothers

Sisters

Depressed

Happy

Musical

Artistic

Naïve

Kind (or not)

Sexual (or not)

Passive (or not)

Aggressive (or not)

Confused

Damaged (or not)

Sons

Daughters

Students

Readers (or not)

Writers (or not)



And I also think it would provide insight and illustration for

Teachers, Parents, and Anyone Who Was Ever a Teenager (Oops! There it is!).

Warning: It is weirdly naively graphic at times—this, because it’s written from the perspective of such a young narrator, and one that (in the form of the novel) is writing anonymous letters. I wouldn’t suggest parents give the book to their kids without reading it themselves first. If your young reader is under thirteen, I’d say you might want to have them wait a year or more. Kids know a lot about a lot of things—in many cases much more than we think we do, but they are also tender inside and our responsibility.

I keep thinking of The Catcher in the Rye and how my teacher told me forty-some years ago that Salinger wanted to “catch” kids, value and love them, before they crossed over into the adult world…and in a way he did that for me, and that’s something I wish I could do, too. Yet, I know many kids, even younger than thirteen, are already exposed to things we wish they weren’t. They are kids, but they are also human animals living in a world that glorifies sex, drugs, and violence, and it is all easily and instantly accessible to most of them. In the face of that, a story about a very sad and lonely young man who faces these issues and begins to understand his own intrinsic value and the possibility of a happy future is pretty darn comforting to me. How about you?

If you read the book, let me know what you think.

Sometimes I can’t figure out if my opinion matters, or if it’s wholesome, or if I’m just like Charlie, struggling to be kind, and to learn, and to care for others. And doing all of that while still hanging on to my real, best, self.

So, I’d like to know what you think, to quote Charlie, “I think you of all people would understand that because I think you of all people are alive and appreciate what that means. At least I hope you do because other people look to you for strength and friendship and it’s that simple. At least that’s what I’ve heard… So this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be” (Chbosky, 2).
Enjoy.