Synopsis: Appreciate life from the outside offers a new perspective. But it comes the time when everything shall be appreciated from the inside.
The book relates the story of a teenage and what does it feel growing and going through high school. It is more intimated than a dairy, Charlie´s letters can be define as well narrated, one of the kind, funny and devastating. Maybe we can take from all where he lives or to whom he writes to, all we know is the world he lives how he sees it and share it with us. Trap in the middle of the desire of living a normal life, his life, and at the same time running away from it, Charlie finds himself in an unknown ambient for him. He presents a world of new experiences as the first date and music tapes, family drama and new friends, the world of alcohol drugs and sex, where the only thing that matters is finding the right song while you drive to the infinity.
I have always liked to read the book before the adaptation to the movies or TV comes up, since I saw the trailer I was looking forward to have the opportunity to do so, and in the end the book won itself a place among my favorites.
The story is narrated through letters that the main character, Charlie, who is a quiet, reserved, and with a point of view much mature than average fifteen years all kids, sends to an anonymous friends that, according to Charlie, is a great person, friendly and a person in whom everybody can count on (and that could also could have slept with somebody but didn´t do it); the only thing that Charlie asks to this friend is that doesn´t treat to find him or relate nothing that he is telling him with other persons, because there are a lot of thing that must remain as a secret. Once this is left clear, Charlie starts to write his letters the experiences since he finishes his last year of middle school and relating all that happens along the first year of high school as a freshman: he tell us about his best and only friend, Michael, who suicide a short time before high school, he tell us about his family and everything that happens inside his house, about the first dates in the new school and his literature teacher; Bill, who let him read a large and variety amount of books, and tell us about how he meets two stepbrothers, Sam y Patrick, that open his harms to him and introduce him to a world of music, party, alcohol and drugs; but more important introduce him to a world full of friendship, compression and love. White the pass of the letters or chapters we see how all this experiences change Charlie and give him lot of lesson to allow him to life his life BEING PART.
I have to say that even the book is small; it covers very well all aspects that we go through during adolescence and it does it a calm and entertaining way, using simple words and easy to understand in first reading. What I like the most about the book is that even I did not experience much of things that are in the book, I can really related with a lot of the Charlie´s first times: the first date, first kiss, the first LOVE, and even the first time I tried alcohol; first times that could be weird and might scare a little, but as Charlie, I had my Sam and Patrick that help find who I really was and this book have remembered me all that.
Summarizing this is a book that I will give to anybody, no matter gender or age, because the story have so much teaching and messages that is impossible that it doesn´t make you see the world is a different way; it is a sweet story and a little ruff because of the language used by the author to relate the actions that he describe.
In the end the message that it let in me, among others that can be found, is that in life e have to be open to chance and trust in people all that they have to offer, real friends are and invaluable possession will be in your life in the good and the bad times and you have to do so with them. One in life shouldn´t run away from feeling and have to have courage to let them take control of what we do and express them and more important express them to the ones we love.
Reference
Chbosky, Stephen. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, New York: MTV Books/Pocket Books, 1999. Print.
