The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I have recently joined entrecard, another traffic site where you "tag" people's cards and they tag you back. It's not like Blogexplosion or Traffic Burst, but I do like it because they have the blogs in categories so you don't have to go through a lot of sports blogs (if you don't care for that) to get to book blogs. (there are many other categories too) Long story short, I came across a blog that featured The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky.

This is a story about Charlie, a 15 year old starting high school, told through letters. The story starts out with...

Dear friend,

I am writing to you because she said you listen and understand and didn't try to sleep with that person at that party even though you could have. Please don't try to figure out who she is because then you might figure out who I am, and I really don't want you to do that. I will call people by different names or generic names because I don't want you to find me. I didn't enclose a return address for the same reason. I mean nothing bad by this. Honest.

Charlie is the youngest of 3, His sister is a senior in high school and his brother just started college with a football scholarship. He's trying to fit in and his English teacher has taken a special interest in him. He assigns extra books for Charlie to read like "Walden" and "Catcher in the Rye". He tells Charlie he should try to participate in life.

Charlie makes friends with Sam and Patrick and is exposed to many new things like music, parties, drugs and alcohol. He is a part of their group, but is he really participating? Charlie lives in a time where you go to see "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and act it out, where you go to Big Boy to hang out and smoke, where you make mixed tapes to give to people to let them know what songs make you think of them. Its a world of first dates, first loves, and first times. The lines of sexuality are blurred and brownies can be magical.

As I was looking at the reviews on Barnes and Noble I was amazed to see that there are 505 reviews and 516 ratings and overall it was given 5 out of 5 stars. Although this book was released in 1999 (the book takes place from Aug 1991 to Aug 1992) the latest review was on Oct 8 of this year.

The one thing that struck me was that Charlie felt younger than most 15 year olds are today. Perhaps that much has changed in our culture. I could not put this book down. I'm 42 and it brought me back to those feeling you get in high school...where do I fit in, how can I be myself, who am I really? Charlie is by far one of the most endearing characters I have ever met and I am the richer for having met him. Not a book about teen angst, because Charlie is more giving than that.

I loved everthing about this book, but be warned...it was one of the 10 most challenged books of 2007.

I give this one 5 out of 5.