The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
213 pages
Published 1999
Read September 15
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
If Jo Walton's Among Others is as close to a narrative of my own teen years as I've ever encountered in fiction (albeit seen through a genre filter), The Perks of Being a Wallflower is pretty much an examination of what I might have been like had I actually gone to high school. The correspondence between teenage me and epistolary narrator Charlie isn't as exact as it was between me and Walton's narrator Mori -- if anything, Charlie was far more outgoing, socially skilled, and eager for new experiences than I was at his age. You might say I would have been more of a wallflower than Charlie. I certainly wouldn't have tried LSD at a party, I have never been tempted to smoke cigarettes, and at 32 years old, I've yet to try weed (though I have no firm personal policy against it). But I related to Charlie's social confusion and tendency to observe from the side of things, and to sacrifice his own desires out of some misguided idea of friendship.
I liked how Charlie's prose style improved somewhat after his initial "letters," though I might ask if it improved enough, realistically speaking, given that he was taking an intensive English class and writing regularly (letters and essays both) for a year. But that's a small quibble. I was left somewhat unsatisfied by how on-the-nose some of the plot twists and psychological revelations were (multiple characters have internalized various mental pathologies as a result of childhood molestation), but this is a YA book from the tail end of the '90s, so that's to be expected, really. I do want to take the time to praise Chbosky for even talking about molestation (not to mention condemning rape, emphasizing consent, and normalizing homosexuality) in a YA book from the '90s. It wasn't that long ago, but in terms of sexual identity and acceptance, 1999 may as well have been in another millennium. (Not my best witticism, sorry about that. I haven't been sleeping well in recent weeks.)
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