Sarah Chadee

Press Pass Cor­re­spon­dent

This va­ca­tion, find­ing amaz­ing books that cir­cle around the lives of teenagers was on the top of my to-do list. I can def­i­nite­ly start off by say­ing that 'The Perks of Be­ing a Wall­flower' by was worth every sec­ond. I have grown wary of books with sim­i­lar plots and nar­ra­tives but this book was a re­fresh­ing and some­what bizarre change. The book starts off with the in­tro­duc­tion of the writer Char­lie (which, by the way, is not his re­al name) and sim­i­lar­ly, all the char­ac­ters he men­tions fol­low suit. The read­er al­so has no idea who Char­lie is writ­ing to and so, by the end of the book, we nei­ther know who the writer is, nor who his dat­ed let­ters are ad­dressed to. But while we may not know these de­tails that seem com­plete­ly nec­es­sary, we do know the world that Char­lie shares and it's amaz­ing how his per­spec­tive pro­duces de­tails that so vivid­ly align with our own lives. While the themes such as love, drugs, drink­ing and sui­cide are ex­plored as in most young adult books, Char­lie's let­ters form a per­son­al di­ary of his life, trans­form­ing over­worked themes in­to some­thing new and in­ter­est­ing.

Char­lie is known to be a wall­flower: a per­son, who, due to shy­ness or un­pop­u­lar­i­ty, re­mains on the side­lines of a so­cial ac­tiv­i­ty. Af­ter his friend com­mits sui­cide, Char­lie tries to 'par­tic­i­pate' more as per the ad­vice of his teacher/men­tor by be­friend­ing a group of se­niors, main­ly two step-sib­lings named Sam and Patrick. Char­lie has an hon­est in­no­cence to him yet such an in­tense depth and in­tel­li­gent mind that he seems to change in per­son­al­i­ty be­tween the nar­ra­tion and the ac­tu­al sto­ry be­ing told. He goes from ob­serv­ing things that hap­pened to his old­er sib­lings to ex­pe­ri­enc­ing them him­self. Sam and Patrick be­come his friends who bring him out of his shy­ness and in­tro­duce him to par­ties and ro­mance and the likes of be­com­ing a teenag­er. Char­lie soon falls in love with Sam, who tells him that he can­not have feel­ings for her be­cause she is old­er. Char­lie tries to ig­nore these feel­ings but they resur­face no mat­ter what. Char­lie is def­i­nite­ly a char­ac­ter that many can re­late to. He gives such an eye-open­ing per­spec­tive on such sim­ple oc­cur­rences that it makes you think twice. This, plus a shock­ing twist at the end, makes The Perks of Be­ing a Wall­flower a must read book!