The perks of being a wallflower.

Rather the perks of being ill meant I was able to trundle through this novel by Stephen Chbosky this morning in my bed ridden state. I was mid way through another book called the collected Dorothy Parker and as much as like Dorothy Parker I needed a little break. So this book is written as a series of letters from a 15 year old called charlie to some unknown person. Essentially then Charlie is the narrator of the story and is a very bright, likeable character who see's the world in his own way. He isn't normal in the traditional sense of normal. The charlie that narrates is inconsistent with the charlie you'd imagine if you only knew the situations and events that happen in the course of the book. He seems younger (and by younger I mean about 8 years old as opposed to 15) in his letters, his level of naivety doesn't match that of an adolescent by even the greatest stretch of the imagination. The quantity of issues dealt with in the book is also rather vast, almost disproportionate to it's length and henceforth none are dealt with any great depth. Saying all of that I really enjoyed this book, if you just go along with it and don't pay any great attention to the nagging feeling that things don't all fit it's actually very good. Some of it is massively sad too and there are quite a few tear jerker moments. Essentially then it's kind of like watching Stepmom or The Notebook or a generic Jennifer Aniston film, a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours but it's probably not going to win any awards. It's compared to the catcher in the rye and other 'coming of age stories' and I genuinely liked it more than J.D Salingers novel (controversial I know but i'm not Holden Caulfields biggest fan) but I doubt it'll leave the same impression on me.