Bookreview final ver - Note: B PDF

Preview

Summary

Download Bookreview final ver - Note: B PDF

Description

Book review, Novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky is narrated by Charlie, in a series of letters that he writes to a stranger, beginning the night before he starts his freshman year of high school in 1991. These letters catalogue Charlie’s attempts to “participate”, as he wanders wide eyed through a series of house parties with his new, older friends. Along the way, themes such as mental health, substance abuse and sexuality, simultaneously remind the reader about how exciting it is to be young and idealistic. At one point, Charlie starts going to the mall simply to try and figure out why people go there. He sees “Old men sitting alone. Young girls with blue eye shadow and awkward jaws. Little kids who look tired.” “It all felt very unsettling” to him. I love the control that Chbosky exercises: he demonstrates Charlie’s deteriorating mental health to the reader simply by having him see sadness wherever he goes. Beyond the writing style, there is still a lot to like about the novel. The cast of characters is diverse. The female characters are numerous and as well developed as their male counterparts. Chbosky’s approach is unflinching, even when the content is upsetting. Underpinning everything is a desire to acknowledge the complexities in other people, an understanding that nobody does bad stuff because they are innately bad. In this way, although the book is, at times, very upsetting, it is ultimately uplifting and lifeaffirming. My one criticism is that whilst Chbosky does include a gay character, that gay character is male. Please allow me one tangential rant. Can anyone think of a single YA book that isn’t explicitly about LGBTQ+ issues, that contains a lesbian character whose sexuality (like Patrick’s) is part of the narrative without being integral to the plot? I can’t. Culturally, we seem quite comfortable with the idea of a slightly effeminate, flamboyant, gay character and I guess I would have liked to see Chbosky be more original in this regard. However this gripe is not as much with Perks of Being A Wallflower as with the YA genre as a whole. I do not expect every book to have an obligatory lesbian extra, but a sprinkling across the lot would be refreshing. On the whole, I think that Chbosky’s discussion of sexuality is excellent and very interesting. For example, Charlie used to kiss boys in the neighbourhood when he was little and is very aware that this concerned his father. Similarly, Charlie’s grandfather doesn’t like to hug family members – especially the boys. The contrast between the older generations’ fear of homosexuality and Charlie’s acceptance of Patrick is indicative of the way that society’s response to homosexuality was changing in the 1990s. It also has a kind of didactic purpose in showing the reader that it’s ok to be gay, which I think is particularly important in YA fiction. However, I also ought to mention that sexual abuse and suicide feature quite heavily in The Perks of Being a Wallflower....