3. The Perks Of Being A Wallflower

Chbosky, Stephen. The Perks Of Being A Wallflower. New York: Pocket Books, 1999.

Annotation:

Charlie a passive high school student in the 90's, reveals intimate details and highlights of his life through personal letters written to an anonymous reader.

Justification For Rejection:

Written in a contemporary style, each page consisted of numerous entry dates and a letter format similar to a diary/journal or a "dear John" letter. I thought the different format would be interesting and would make the experience more intimate but unfortunately it came off as a lot of boring babel and pointless sensory details.

If I had to pick a positive thing from this book it would be the 90's atmosphere and all the sensory details. The author also did a good job of capturing the voice of a freshman in high school and the awkward experiences one has with love, sex, puberty and social anxieties. Unfortunately it was too jumbled and scattered within each page to make anything interesting. Each letter seemed like a mini-story that would reveal little or no information that pushed the story forward. It was literally like a journal recalling past events that didn't flow naturally or transition well. Story lines became untangled but it took too long for any sort of hook to present itself. The premise and set up/back story of each character was interesting but the jumping around found it hard to focus.

The author of this book graduated with a film degree and you can definitely tell that he had more experience with films because while the imagery was strong, the story was sort of a mess. This book was similar to reading a screenplay except if it were one it would have had too much voice over and dialogue. The particular letters that re-told actual dialogue or scenes from the protagonist Charlie's past felt particularly UN-natural and pulled you immediately in and out of this persons world like a rag doll.

For the most part, I had the best expectations and enthusiasm for this story and thought it brought up an interesting point of view (first) but the way it was presented and weaved in and out, made it lose it's relevance and interest.