The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Written by: Stephen Chbosky
Central Theme:
Synopsis:
First published: February 1, 1999
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"And in that moment, I swear we were infinite."
The book's most famous quote.

The first novel by Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower was first published in 1999.

The narrator, 16-year-old Charlie, is just starting high school as a freshman, having been held back a couple of years for reasons of being in the hospital due to being emotionally damaged. The novel primarily concerns Charlie's adventures in the '91-'92 school year, and is written as an Epistolary Novel, a collection of letters Charlie is writing to a friend-of-a-friend whom he was told would be a good listener. Charlie, who doesn't excel at much except reading, seems to be off to a bad start before two seniors, step-siblings Patrick and Sam, take him under their wing. And so begins Charlie's adventures into school, literature, dating, Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll, teen pregnancy, suicide[please verify] and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The book was well-received and essentially the literary version of a Killer App for its publisher, the newly-launched MTV Books. It has drawn comparisons to The Catcher in The Rye, primarily for being a pull-no-punches look at high school and for having a First-Person Narrator. It also placed 6th on 2008's List Of Most Frequently Banned Books, for similar reasons.

A movie, written, directed, and produced by Chbosky, was released in 2012. Logan Lerman and Emma Watson play Charlie and Sam respectively, and Mae Whitman plays Mary Elizabeth.

Chbosky wrote Imaginary Friend as a follow-up to this novel; it was published in 2019.

Tropes used in The Perks of Being a Wallflower include: