The Perks of Being a Wallflower is about Charlie, a boy who would rather fit in than stand out, and his friends. Well, it's not really fitting in either. Maybe blending in would be a better phrase. Charlie's friends range from Patrick (a flamboyantly gay guy with a closeted boyfriend) to Mary Elizabeth (a hipster who runs a Rocky Horror Picture Show 'zine).
The book is a Greek tragedy, basically. It has as many coincidences and twists for the sake of the plot as one. It does, surprisingly, manage to have a little less screentime on the Greek gods than a Greek tragedy. And the book just works. It doesn't underdo the twists, and I guess it could be overdoing them a bit-but for a teenager just discovering soap operas, twists are basically a Class A drug.
Charlie does come off as cloying at times (just see how he acts in that one letter where he talks about masturbation-wow, that was awful), but after the first few chapters, Chbosky seems to keep it to a minimum.
The book has a lot of big, flashy quotes that are almost its ambassadors, but I feel its beauty lies in the simpler moments. You know the ones-the moments where the stars align and we finally figure out the foreshadowing Chbosky has been planting.
In the end, Perks is a beautiful book that can be construed as a self-parody at times-but I construe it as a beautiful book that all makes sense in the end.
Rating: five stars out of six
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