The Perks of Being a Wallflower

This coming-of-age novel has everything: love, grunge music, angst, and a slow revelation of past trauma. I don't think I speak for everyone with mental health issues, but I know that having a traumatic childhood is a common, shared factor amongst people with serious diagnoses. I read this one before I understood why I identified so strongly with it.

Charlie lives on the fringes, barely dipping a toe into the social melee that is high school life, yet, with courage and determination, he carves out a place for himself. While his new friendships allow him to find himself, they also… show more.

I know it’s trite to start a list of recommendations with a classic coming-of-age book almost everyone has read, but I would never dream of curating a list like this without including Perks. As a self-identifying wallflower, I was intrigued by the premise. I can’t say I experienced what our main character, Charlie, did.

His story is not mine, and I have never gotten to stand up in a car with my arms out. Yet Charlie’s quiet interiority, eccentricity, and sincerity charmed me when I first read it in high school and will stay with me for the rest of… show more.

I loved the honesty of Charlie’s narration and how no subject was off-limits. While it might feel a bit overwhelming that Charlie deals with homophobia, suicide, rape, PTSD, mental illness, and child abuse, I thought Charlie’s acknowledgment of these social issues was realistic.

I often feel like these and other human problems are on my mind in a way that restricts my outer actions and that most other people don’t think about things like these as frequently as I do. Charlie made me feel understood. 

I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower as one of my choices for Banned Books Week 2023. I didn’t expect to fall so far in love with the characters that the rest of my world fell away while I was reading it. I stayed up way past my bedtime.

I kept thinking about it during my waking hours. And when it ended, I couldn’t imagine starting another book right away. I ached to know what happened to Charlie and my literary “friends.” I wanted to follow Charlie through high school and college, grow into adulthood, and learn the lessons… show more.

Let’s just be honest here: We know we all love this book because of the feels that we experience once that twist hits us, right?

I don’t want to ruin it if you’re not familiar, but once Charlie comes to terms with this very important moment, we empathize with his complicated feelings and we support his recovery, even if it means that certain people in his life will be looked at in a very negative way.

This book reminds us of how important it is to heal, even if the things we have to do to get there may not… show more.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower makes you feel young again. It encapsulates the magic of youth, the struggle of youth, and the promise of youth.

I read it when young, scribbling notes in the margins for friends while reading the notes others had written for me. The novel asks you to become part of it simply by the narrator speaking directly to the reader, confiding in you.

Much more than a singular perspective, the story feels infinite, easily speaking to everyone in its specificity and showcased complexity featured in the idea, “…I want you to know that I… show more.

As a debut novelist, I face this nagging sense of obligation to prove myself to the world as a Serious Writer And Thinker, and thus I was initially a bit sheepish about recommending a young adult title here.

It’s in the service of the very unabashed earnestness this list commemorates that I’m forcing myself to get over it and say the following: there are few elegies to the wistfulness of adolescence more poignant or haunting than The Perks of Being A Wallflower.

I read it for the first time as a seventh grader in 2006 and probably six more times… show more.

Once I read about Charlie, the main character in Stephen Chbosky’s novel, I was intrigued how a shy, bookish kid like me could become so wild and crazy in his first year of high school. Charlie is the main character who at fifteen writes about his freshman experience not unlike a diary. The story is written through Charlie’s detailed, and very personal letters. School begins with him being bullied. He finds it difficult to make friends, but finally there’s a boy he can relate to who is gay and who introduces Charlie to his sister, Sam. Love takes hold of… show more.

Written wholly in letters to an anonymous “friend”, Perks tells the story of Charlie, a fragile young man on the fringes of life, trying to navigate high school in the wake of tragedy and trauma. We never know who Charlie is writing to, but that doesn’t matter. He takes on a profoundly moving journey to the edges of the kind of darkness that can often lead to choices that can’t be taken back and which haunt families forever. Along with new friends, a passion for the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and a love of mix-tapes, I couldn’t put this… show more.

While I have no desire to return to being a naïve teenager, Charlie’s wide-eyed tale of adolescence tugged at the sentimentalist in me. Charlie’s life was less than perfect but he kept going back out into the world to discover new, wondrous things. Sometimes those adventures led him upward and sometimes they led him downward. Adults are not immune to ups and downs. I certainly am not. Charlie’s tale did remind me of some of my own teenage tales. Like the time I came in last at a track race and fell down and cried because I thought it was… show more.