Summary:
Charlie is a freshman. And while he's not the biggest geek in the school, he is by no means popular. Shy, introspective, intelligent beyond his years yet socially awkward, he is a wallflower, caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it.
Charlie is attempting to navigate his way through uncharted territory: the world of first dates and mix-tapes, family dramas and new friends; the world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite.
But Charlie can't stay on the sideline forever. Standing on the fringes of life offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor.
Wow. This book is breathtaking and has left me speechless. I've never been on such a journey with one book! At the start I really wasn't enjoying it and was going to rate it 3 stars, however my opinion changed dramatically once I hit the middle. I was finding it hard to get through and was frustrated at the fact that it was taking me ages to read, as I normally read pretty fast. But I started to just read, and stop trying to find faults, and I loved it!
Charlie was a great main character. I don't read many books that are narrated from a male perspective and so I was a little wary at first but I actually really enjoyed reading it. It's a refreshing change after reading solely from a female view. It was clear right from the start that Charlie wasn't normal. He only had one friend, who we find out committed suicide before the novel started. The novel is based around Charlie meeting two people, Sam and Patrick, who introduce him to their world.
We see Charlie's character develop throughout the novel from a boy who is kind of lost, in to one who has discovered himself.
All of the character's seemed to have a purpose. There were quite a lot of them but they were easy to remember and all fitted in well.
Sam and Patrick were characters that I felt moved the story along a great deal. Although they weren't exactly angels I loved how they treated Charlie when they could have just ignored him.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower is all about coming of age and that time in our lives when we find ourselves. The language used really shows us the way Charlie's mind works and is written in such a way that the reader can believe that Charlie himself wrote it, instead of an author in his place. It really could be autobiographical!
It was a novel I thoroughly enjoyed and I'm looking forward to how the plot and characters are portrayed in the movie adaption (out in the UK in January 2013).
RATING: 5/5
