Chbosky, Stephen. The Perks of Being a Wallflower. New York: MTV Books/Pocket Books, 1999.
Annotation:
Coming of age is a hard process and no one understands you. This is exactly how Charlie feels. With his journals he shares with the world his most precious feelings about his family, dating, friends, and high school. No one understands him, but now they will.
Nomination for Rejection:
The Perks of Being a Wallflower was the tenth book challenged in 2007. I had high expectations because it was a challenged book. I thought that it would be one of those novels that I would want to read again, but I was wrong. For me, much of the novel was just a huge waste of well spent time that I could have been using to read something good. The main character's name is Charlie. His words are confusing and sometimes even meaningless. He would talk about a subject and then immediately switch to a subject that had nothing to do with what he was originally talking about. Its like he got distracted and forgot what he was talking about so he just switched to another subject. The only part of his words that weren't confusing was when he would repeat the words of the other characters in the novel. Chbosky's vocabulary usage is beautiful. He knows how to use very descriptive words to describe people and places. However, his sentence structure lacked a sort of control. It is almost like the sentences were running together. As I read I could actually picture Charlie talking really fast. I didn't enjoy this because when I read a book, I want to be able to take my time and enjoy the words and the characters. Even if The Perks of Being a Wallflower did slow down it still wouldn't change my opinion about the novel.
I think that Charlie has emotion, but he is stuck only on happy and sad. For example, when he sees Sam (the girl he likes) with another guy, he feels sad instead of anger. Chbosky gives his main character these conflicts, but he doesn't give his character the means to solve them. For example, Charlie wants to be with Sam, but he doesn't make an actual move to be with her. He kisses her, but even the kiss lacks any emotion or passion. Charlie is a total clueless and empty character who is more of a child than a teenager. He is a freshman in high school and yet lacks any knowledge of any subjects that explores the coming of age topic. In a novel where of the main focuses is coming of age, I think there should be some sort of excitement. In any other novel, the coming of age theme would be explored by the characters in an a very in-depth way. For me Chbosky failed to grip the meaning of coming of age. Its not all about sex, drugs, and crying. Charlie's true feelings came toward the end of The Perks of Being a Wallflower. He transitioned from being like a child to being a teenager. He didn't ask stupid questions and cry as much (which annoyed me from the beginning). I thought it was weird that Charlie kissed one of his male friends was his duty as a friend, but it was defiantly a step up from boring emotions, a boring plot, and flat characters that I thought The Perks of Being a Wallflower had at the beginning. I couldn't put the book down when it got close to the end. I'm not sure if it was because the beginning and the middle dragged on for what seemed like a life time and I wanted to be finished with the novel because it was very boring or if it was because the end was the only part of The Perks of Being a Wallflower that was really good. Truthfully I have to say that I did cry and I did laugh, but The Perks of Being a Wallflower still gets my nomination for rejection.
Genre Category: Banned/Challenged
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