I enjoy reading angst books, ones in which the central characters are battling horrific conditions yet are able to triumph over them to stay sane and become happy. He worries about everything and consequently puts himself into an almost catatonic state, falling asleep in hazardous conditions in some cases. Instead of being precocious and brilliant as he’s said to be by a doctor and a teacher, he comes across as emotionally and psychologically stunted. The biggest problem with the book is Charlie. Charlie’s older brother, a football star at Penn State, ignores his younger brother for college. She’s in an abusive relationship with a boy and gets knocked up by him. Through these two Charlie meets Mary Elizabeth, a determined vegan and Buddhist, who shanghaies Charlie to be her boyfriend, even though the emotionally stunted Charlie can barely handle friendship, much less something that has sexual potential.Īt home, Charlie’s parents are normal, nice people, but his sister has issues. Chain-smoking Patrick, who says he’s gay, and his stepsister Sam become pivotal to Charlie’s bid for normalcy. In an effort to do so, Charlie hooks up with a group of seniors who seem to be as much outcast as he is. Instead, Charlie is caught up with his Aunt Helen’s death since he and she were close.īut his psychiatrist says he must move on. William’s death, however, isn’t what Charlie dwells on. He cries at the drop of a hat and has no friends since William, a boy he grew up with, killed himself. Each letter explains some trauma in Charlie’s life and is supposed to help him regain normalcy after a life-changing incident in his past.Ĭharlie isn’t so much a wallflower as he is an oddity. The story of an over-dramatic, unbelievable fifteen-year-old freshman in high school is told through his letters to someone he calls a friend. I went into the book eager to see what the shouting was all about, but I put down the novel thinking it’s been highly overrated. Still, it has shown up on the New York Times bestseller list, so someone must be reading it. This debut novel, first published in 1999, has been reissued purportedly because of its wild popularity, but probably because it opened as a movie in October 2012 and starred Emma Watson of Harry Potter fame.
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