The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
“I should probably go to sleep now. It’s very late. I don’t know why I wrote a lot of this down for your to read. The reason why I wrote this letter is because I start high school tomorrow and I am really afraid of going.”
The Perks of Being a Wallflower Review
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, in a nutshell, revolves around Charlie, a “wallflower”, and his first year of high school as a freshman. Accompanying this series of events include discovering himself glued to the world of family, friends, and books — with the influence of pot, drugs, and sexual intimacy. Charlie, although seeming innocent, has actually been undergoing therapy sessions about his childhood and his behavior — to the fact of getting to neglect what’s wrong with him, rather, what’s right with him.
First of all, people have been saying that this book is similar to The Silver Linings Playbook, and it turns out that they’re right.
They are.
However, as much as I loved TSLP, I didn’t quite get the sense of this one. Yes, both of them are very similar yet also different in so many ways.
What I liked about this book: how it showed a process of growing up. How someone can be so influenced with people. How someone can keep it up with all this transition’s down’s and up’s. Those elements were present in the book, and I loved how they were presented in an easy-read style.
But that was just it.
Unfortunately, I didn’t really like this book. First, the writing style. I don’t get the point of using “letters” as a writing style when the reader wouldn’t even get to know to whom the voice is writing to. And whoever that person is — she must be dead, because there was no “life” put to her; she did not once appear as an actual character in the book. It was all pointless and there was no sense to it, and because of this, the readers wouldn’t get to explore much of Charlie and the other characters’ insights, depth of emotion, and anything whatsoever that would promote empathy for the them. Second, it was very typical. The plot, characters, and such were all very common and not really well-thought about. Smoking pot, sex, hanging out with friends, parties — nothing’s new about them, except for the fact that Charlie has a weird thing that’s worth for therapy sessions. My point is that nothing’s really different or unique about this book. It has its own identity, sure, but this identity is boring and dull.
All in all, The Perks of Being a Wallflower was an easy read about Charlie in his stages of growing up, although I found this process typical.
Recommended for wallflowers.
1/5. I just couldn’t like it.
Movie Review
Wow. That was one of the most loyal movie adaptations from a book which turned out [better]! Really loved it.
