The Perks of Being a Wallflower [Paperback]

Stephen Chbosky (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 1, 1999

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. This haunting novel about the dilemma of passivity vs. passion marks the stunning debut of a provocative new voice in contemporary fiction: The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

This is the story of what it's like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie's letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it puts him on a strange course through uncharted territory. The world of first dates and mixed 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.

Through Charlie, Stephen Chbosky has created a deeply affecting coming-of-age story, a powerful novel that will spirit you back to those wild and poignant roller coaster days known as growing up.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

What is most notable about this funny, touching, memorable first novel from Stephen Chbosky is the resounding accuracy with which the author captures the voice of a boy teetering on the brink of adulthood. Charlie is a freshman. And while's he's not the biggest geek in the school, he is by no means popular. He's a wallflower--shy and introspective, and intelligent beyond his years, if not very savvy in the social arts. We learn about Charlie through the letters he writes to someone of undisclosed name, age, and gender, a stylistic technique that adds to the heart-wrenching earnestness saturating this teen's story. Charlie encounters the same struggles that many kids face in high school--how to make friends, the intensity of a crush, family tensions, a first relationship, exploring sexuality, experimenting with drugs--but he must also deal with his best friend's recent suicide. Charlie's letters take on the intimate feel of a journal as he shares his day-to-day thoughts and feelings:

I walk around the school hallways and look at the people. I look at the teachers and wonder why they're here. If they like their jobs. Or us. And I wonder how smart they were when they were fifteen. Not in a mean way. In a curious way. It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report due on top of that. Or wondering who did the heart breaking. And wondering why.

With the help of a teacher who recognizes his wisdom and intuition, and his two friends, seniors Samantha and Patrick, Charlie mostly manages to avoid the depression he feels creeping up like kudzu. When it all becomes too much, after a shocking realization about his beloved late Aunt Helen, Charlie retreats from reality for awhile. But he makes it back in due time, ready to face his sophomore year and all that it may bring. Charlie, sincerely searching for that feeling of "being infinite," is a kindred spirit to the generation that's been slapped with the label X. --Brangien Davis

From Publishers Weekly

A trite coming-of-age novel that could easily appeal to a YA readership, filmmaker Chbosky's debut broadcasts its intentions with the publisher's announcement that ads will run on MTV. Charlie, the wallflower of the title, goes through a veritable bath of bathos in his 10th grade year, 1991. The novel is formatted as a series of letters to an unnamed "friend," the first of which reveals the suicide of Charlie's pal Michael. Charlie's response--valid enough--is to cry. The crying soon gets out of hand, though--in subsequent letters, his father, his aunt, his sister and his sister's boyfriend all become lachrymose. Charlie has the usual dire adolescent problems--sex, drugs, the thuggish football team--and they perplex him in the usual teen TV ways. [...] Into these standard teenage issues Chbosky infuses a droning insistence on Charlie's supersensitive disposition. Charlie's English teacher and others have a disconcerting tendency to rhapsodize over Charlie's giftedness, which seems to consist of Charlie's unquestioning assimilation of the teacher's taste in books. In the end we learn the root of Charlie's psychological problems, and we confront, with him, the coming rigors of 11th grade, ever hopeful that he'll find a suitable girlfriend and increase his vocabulary.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 213 pages
• Publisher: MTV Books; Original edition (February 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671027344
• ISBN-13: 978-0671027346
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.5 x 7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4,732 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,147 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #40 in Books > Teens > Social Issues
  • #56 in Books > Teens > Literature & Fiction

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#10 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics

#24 in Books > Teens

#25 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction

#34 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary

#38 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Literary

#10 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics

#24 in Books > Teens

#25 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction

#34 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary

#38 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Literary

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

779 of 824 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Startling, Gripping, and Absolutely Honest June 30, 2000

By Emily

Format:Paperback

I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky, in April of my sophomore year at college. A friend lent it to me and I had read it within twelve hours. This book reaches inside of you and pulls everything to the surface. It is a beautiful and painful story about a 15 year old boy, Charlie, moving through his freshmen year of highschool. It is written in letter form to an unknown friend. Charlie is always completely honest, whether he is describing his first "beer" party where he witnessed a girl being raped by her boyfriend, or explaining masturbation and his excitement for this newfound "activity." Charlie is a wallflower who observes people and feels very deeply for the experiences occuring around him. His favorite Aunt Helen died in a car accident when he was six, and he holds himself accountable, and his best friend committed suicide a year before he began the letters. His English teacher realizes Charlie's potential and brilliance and asks him to try and participate, which Charlie agrees to do. He becomes friends with two seniors Patrick and Samantha and begins to experience dances, parties, the Rocky Horror Picture Show, pot, love, bad trips and sexuality. We feel exhilerated when Charlie describes his happy moments, and we are swallowed in pain when Charlie is overwhelmed by his depression. Charlie's realizations are eye opening for us, and we are so captivated and immersed in his life that his life and stories become a very real experience. This book is about moments, and being as much alive within each moment as possible.... It is about looking around us at the world and the people and appreciating that we don't know what their lives are like, and the pain and happiness that they experience day to day, so we shouldn't judge them but accept them and appreciate them. A favorite section of this book, for me, was when Charlie describes the movie It's A Wonderful Life, and how he wished the movie had been about one of the less heroic characters so the audience could have seen the meaning that this person's life held. That moment is just one example of Charlie's amazing intuition. This book should not be limited to a certain "category" of people. I truly believe that it would be understood, appreciated, and loved by everyone aged 12 (+ or - a few) and up regardless of gender, race, sexuality, etc. This book changes you, if only for a moment, but you are not the same upon completion, and you become more appreciative of life then ever. Read more ›

138 of 155 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Going through the tunnel December 7, 1999

By Michael Rogers

Format:Paperback

When I finished The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chybosky, I sat there in a stunned silence. The book was strongly powerful in a manner that diary or letter style books rarely achieve. There is usually a sense of implausibility in those types of books that Charlie's character completely negated. When trying to describe Charlie the mind suddenly reels, he's honest. Completely and utterly genuine in his perceptions and most of his actions. Charlie is also and emotional basket case that somehow manages to attract a special group of friends to him. A group of voluntary outcasts that go through the same problems teenagers face everywhere. Sex, drugs, relationships and acceptance figure heavily into everyone's lives, despite their personal beliefs on those subjects. I would like to mention Stephen's portrayal of Patrick, I was pleased to see the sbuject of homosexuality treated in such a plain manner. It was accepted as a fact and only the feelings invovled in the situations were important. I would recomment this book to a wide range of people, old or young, straight or gay, conservative or liberal. It was a pleasure to read and I enjoyed it immensely.

72 of 92 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Kind of Cheezy and Implausible, But Provocative November 5, 2005

By A. Ross HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Even though I have a bit of a penchant for the coming-of-age genre, it's unlikely I would have picked this debut novel up had it not been selected for my book club to read. That said, it's one of those paradoxical books that isn't objectively all that great, and yet managed to provoke fairly strong reaction in everyone I know who read it, and was a great springboard for conversation. As I later discovered, it's a very controversial book in that it's made its way onto assigned reading lists at high schools around the country, while also being one of perennially the most "challenged", according to the American Library Association. The story is told by Charlie, a 15-year-old boy starting his freshman year of high school in some medium-sized Pennsylvania city. From the very beginning, the reader learns he's got a whole host of issues, including the recent suicide of his only friend, and a recent spell at a mental facility following the death of a beloved aunt. The book takes the form of letters he writes to an unnamed person as a form of self-therapy. Presumably the format is intended to draw the reader into Charlie's world, to make the reader the confidante, but it's somewhat clumsily executed. From a stylistic standpoint, the letters often lapse into verbatim dialogue found in novels (and never in letters), and one suspects Chbosky would have been better off just writing it as a straight first-person novel.

In any event, soon after school starts and it's established that Charlie is utterly alone, he manages to befriend two seniors (a brother and sister). They cheerfully-and completely implausibly-take him under their wing and induct him into their established circle of "outsider" friends (the kind who go see Rocky Horror Picture Show every Friday).... The likelihood of a group of relatively cool outsider seniors actively tanking in an utterly awkward freshman stretched credulity too far for everyone I know who's read the book. But you have to accept it to continue and soon, despite being the titular wallflower, he is well on his way to learning about the classic themes of sex, drugs, and rock and roll (although it's admittedly a bit of a stretch to call The Smiths rock and roll...). Much of the story revolves around how numb Charlie is to life, and his halting attempts to "participate" in life. Alas, his social skills are completely retarded, and while he is completely nice and full of love for his friends, his cluelessness to social norms continually confuses and thwarts him. And lurking behind all of this is some heavy duty emotional damage that has him always on the verge of bursting into tears, the underlying cause of which is revealed with a grand flourish at the end.

The book moves right along at a rapid pace, however if one steps back at the end, one realizes that Charlie has managed to encounter almost every teen issue out there in a kind of smorgasbord of afterschool special issues. There's drug experimentation, sexual experimentation, homosexuality and homophobia, abusive relationships, teen pregnancy, bullying, suicide, depression, social ostracization, and so on-basically every coming-of-age topic is covered in the span of a school year. It all becomes a bit much, and Chbosky would have been much better served focusing on only a few of these instead of throwing the kitchen sink at Charlie.

Charlie's account of all this is certainly likely to generate a great deal of empathy in certain kinds of readers (a number of people in my bookgroup reported having cried at times while reading it) and a certain degree of introspection on one's own teen years. However, elements of the story read strongly of author-fantasy, of being the kinds of things that Chbosky wishes had happened to him. For example, there's the cool Teach for America teacher who gives Charlie all these extra "advanced" books to read and eventually tells him that he's not just the most brilliant kid he's ever met, but he most brilliant person! And then there's Charlie's first kiss, set up in heart-rending perfection by the much older girl he's in love with, which reads like a textbook entry of what everyone in the whole world wishes their first kiss could have been.

So, it's not a great book, there's a lot of really cheezy bits, and one has to suspend a great deal of disbelief. And yet Chbosky does manage to pull off some very nice and sometimes quite funny writing about family, friendship, and figuring oneself out. The sexual themes are perhaps more than many parents might feel comfortable with, and what's especially likely to worry parents is that no judgments are made. (Of course, if judgments were made, it's unlikely the intended audience of teens would respond particularly well to being spoon-fed what they should think and feel.) Still, it struck most people I know as a good book for generating discussion with their own kids at age 13 or 14. Read more ›

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Ending almost ruins this incredible novel about H.S. . . . July 31, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower is charming, sincere and amusing. Charlie, the main character or narrator, so to speak, is interesting and insightful and this angst-driven novel is one of the better ones I've read as of late. Fans of Blake Nelson's novel, Girl, will find Charlie the male version of Andrea Marr and those who liked the book Youth in Revolt will love The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Anyone who survived (barely, I'm sure) high school thanks to The Smiths, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, soul-searching classics like Catcher in the Rye, mix tapes and long drives with friends who were snubbed by the Beautiful People will find familiarity with Charlie's yearning to fit in while dealing with a friend's suicide, a family member's death and issues, like rape and homosexuality, that are now commonplace in the halls of today's High School USA. Chbosky has a nice writing style and draws the reader into Charlie's world to the point where you may not want to put the book down. This book falls short, however, with the ending. The last chapter thoroughly disappoints and makes me wonder how the book's ending got passed its editor. I was so irate at how Chbosky chose to leave his character at the end of his freshman year in high school that it almost ruined the book for me. Although I had a bad taste in my mouth when I was finished, the rest of the novel is worthwhile especially when more attention should be paid to the Darias of today's high schools and not the Star Football player or the Crazy Kid with the Gun.