Review 3: Coming of Age

Chbosky, Stephen. The Perks of Being a Wallflower. New York: MTv, 1999. Print

Annotation: Letters to a stranger, a wallflower blooms through hardship and a forgotten painful memory.

Justification for Rejection:
Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, at the start of the novel, I thought it was a little dull and seemed to drag on. A lot of the information was too ambiguous; you had no idea of what was going on. The main character and narrator, Charlie, became unreliable and unrealistic as he struggled with trying to “participate” in school activities. Unreliable because there were so many conflicts within him that you struggled to figure out which one is the real Charlie. But half way through the novel I couldn’t put it down, I began to understand Charlie’s doubts, and the ambiguity became something you try to solve within Charlie’s letters. I traveled with Charlie, his friends and family as they all come to term with secrets they kept, and sacrifices because of them which sets in motion the realness of the writing. The novel is a great read, I would recommend it to anyone, yet I still want to move this in the rejection pile.

The strength the novel has does not out way the flaws. There were way too many themes and clichés packed into the novel. Charlie in a span of one year deals with, suicide, drugs, abusive relationship, sexual orientation, sex, alcohol, and one-sided love, and not one of them is resolved or taken as a serious issue. By the end of the book it becomes too cliché that you figure out how the story ended without finishing it, there was no big shocker at the end. The novel would have been remarkable if there weren’t so much packed in a year, if it was to span three years it would be more reliable and interesting to see rather than acceptance after finding out the forgotten memory and it’s not simple you can easily accept after founding out. The novel needed more focus on Charlie and less on clichés.


Genre Category: Coming of Age