Charlie is entering high school alone. His best friend, Michael, has died by suicide. Charlie writes his thoughts, fears and life updates in letters addressed only to a “Dear Friend.” Soon, though, Charlie meets Sam, a caring and magnetic senior with an undeserved reputation, and her stepbrother Patrick, who is harboring a secret relationship with the quarterback of the football team. Together, Patrick, Sam and Charlie create an island all their own. They help Charlie find his footing and then himself.
“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” honestly grapples with adolescent anguish, the numbing pain of a close death, the pressure to conform, and the generational toll of sexual abuse within a family. But at its core, it is a story about the power of friendship. Sam and Patrick offer Charlie the steady ground to find himself. They are shelter from the storm that is the typical pain of high school and the additional trauma Charlie is facing. They help Charlie understand the insight captured in the book’s most famous quote and most enduring message: “We accept the love we think we deserve.” Friendship, in the pages of this book, is life-or-death.
Admittedly, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” is one of those books that is not so easily summarized. The themes the book addresses are dark and heavy, but it doesn’t read that way. “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” is sweet and poignant. Accurately so. That is high school, that is adolescence: the painful meeting of adulthood, lingering childhood naïvete and teenage feelings. It is not easy to strike that note, right at the crossroads of those three things, but Chbosky does it again and again. The result is a book that is so specific in its story, its frequent ’90s cultural references and its nuanced characters that it feels universal. This book’s power is its ability to reach so many.
“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” masterfully uses outside elements as…
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