Adolescence is an awkward time for many, and those who have recently graduated high school in the past couple of years will definitely look back on those years either fondly, or with disdain. For me personally, it's a little bit of both. I grew up with my fair share of bullies and unrequited crushes, but it would be a lie to say that I completely hated high school. I'm still friends with some of the other from my class, even if I don't see them every day. God, there even people in my class who are married and/or they have kids now! It's crazy to think about! If you're in high school now, just give it a few more years, trust me, it gets way better.
Despite my own personal experiences with high school, there are a lot of YA fiction books out there that take place in high school; I've even reviewed a few on here. Nonetheless, one of my new favorites that I have recently read is "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," but Stephen Chbosky.
This book is amazing, but in a way that while it has incredibly profound messages about love, sex, acceptance, and family, it also haunts me to this day because of the sheer weight of its themes. The story is about Charlie, a young freshman in Pittsburgh, and how he navigates his way through the treacherous waters of high school and adolescence. The format of the story is through many letters that Charlie writes to the reader, instead of just one, continuous narrator.
Charlie as a narrator is unreliable since he only can really see things from his point of view. Nonetheless, his point of view changes as he progresses through the story. He has to come to grips with one of his friends being gay, and what that means from a social standpoint. He witnesses a rape, only to be called a voyeur for witnessing it by his sister. He tries drugs and gets drunk, if only for the experience of doing so. I'm not going to spoil the whole book in this paragraph, but this is the kind of stuff you'll be reading about if you decide to pick it up.
The greatest question that this novel poses is this: "Why do bad things happen to (seemingly) good people," or rather, "Why do good people let these bad things happen to them?" Charlie's innocence is crushed as he figures out just who he is and why he's the way he is. After finally being able to be with the girl he had wanted to be with for so long, he can't allow himself to be intimate. Charlie's suppressed past is later revealed, and it was shocking to read. While Charlie is supposed to be a gentle, happy soul, he is just bombarded with horrible circumstances over and over again.
Probably my favorite thing about this book is because of its content, it has been challenged many times. It's appeared in the top 10 most challenged books by the American Library Association because of its sheer content. While I agree that the book shouldn't be in the hands of middle schoolers, a mature high school-aged student should have the freedom to read this great work. To the untrained eye, it is a tale of a young man's awful circumstances, but to the experienced reader, it is a tale about overcoming those circumstances and making yourself better because of them.
I highly recommend this story.
Rating: 4.5/5
