THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER

BY: STEPHEN CHBOSKY

BOOK REVIEW

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky is narrated by Charlie,

the titular ‘wallflower’, in a series of letters that he writes to a stranger, beginning the

night before he starts his freshman year of high school in 1991. These letters catalogue

Charlie’s attempts to “participate”, as he wanders wide eyed through a series of house

parties and Rocky Horror Picture Show productions with his new, older friends. Along

the way, Chbosky intelligently explores stock YA themes such as mental health,

substance abuse and sexuality, whilst simultaneously reminding the reader about how

exciting it is to be young and idealistic.

Charlie’s coming-of-age story is one that I believe anyone can identify with.

There are extreme things happening in Charlie’s life, but these extremities don’t make

the story any less relatable. It’s because Charlie writes letters, hypothetically to the

book’s readers, that I think the story is one of a kind.

Perks came out in 1999, so Charlie’s high school years are based in the early

90’s. I wasn’t in high school in the early 90’s, but that doesn’t matter. What makes a

high school authentic hasn’t changed much over the years, and Charlie’s high school

looks a lot like high schools now. The fact that this story is still incredibly relatable,

almost 20 years after it was published, proves that it is one of a kind and worth the

attention it’s received.

My one criticism is that whilst Chbosky does include a gay character, that gay

character is male. Humour me, dear reader, allow me one tangential rant. Can anyone

think of a single YA book that isn’t explicitly about LGBTQ+ issues, that contains a

lesbian character whose sexuality (like Patrick’s) is part of the narrative without being
integral to the plot? I can’t. Culturally, we seem quite comfortable with the idea of a

slightly effeminate, flamboyant, gay character and I guess I would have liked to see

Chbosky be more original in this regard.

However this gripe is not as much with Perks as with the YA genre as a whole.

I do not expect every book to have an obligatory lesbian extra, but a sprinkling across

the lot would be refreshing. On the whole, I think that Chbosky’s discussion of sexuality

is excellent and very interesting. For example, Charlie used to kiss boys in the

neighbourhood when he was little and is very aware that this concerned his father.

Similarly, Charlie’s grandfather doesn’t like to hug family members – especially the

boys. The contrast between the older generations’ fear of homosexuality and Charlie’s

acceptance of Patrick is indicative of the way that society’s response to homosexuality

was changing in the 1990s. It also has a kind of didactic purpose in showing the reader

that it’s ok to be gay, which I think is particularly important in YA fiction.

However, I also ought to mention that sexual abuse and suicide feature quite

heavily in The Perks of Being a Wallflower and it would therefore be irresponsible of

me to recommend it without a trigger warning. Furthermore, it is probably worth

pointing out to parents who are inclined to censorship that this book does contain some

additional (really quite exciting) drugs/sex/swearing content that would make the text

unsuitable for younger readers.

With this in mind though, I cannot recommend The Perks of Being A Wallflower

highly enough. In general, literature allows us to live other people’s lives through their

stories. We can discover what it is like to be a different gender or age, to live in a

different place or time with different values. In this way, reading is a remarkable feat

of empathy. But occasionally we find a fictional scenario which in some way matches
our own circumstances so profoundly that there is no need for empathy. When I first

read The Perks of Being A Wallflower, I was Charlie. Although our backgrounds were

in some ways different, I had never, and have never since, read a textual

representation of adolescence that matched my own experiences so well. This is the

strength of Chbosky’s writing. He crafts Charlie’s voice in a way that defies context.

Charlie is inside every lonely teenager and every adult remembers him fondly. The

Perks of Being a Wallflower is a gift, and to Stephan Chbosky I will always be grateful.
 CRAZY RICH ASIANS
BY: KEVIN KWAN
BOOK REVIEW

At New York’s Serendipity 3 cafe, money-is-no-object customers can order an

expensive sundae that’s garnished with gold leaf. Like plunking a cherry atop such an

extravagant dessert, the delirious sugar high that is “Crazy Rich Asians” ends with

fireworks exploding along the roof of Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands hotel — one of

the world’s most expensive buildings. Surprisingly enough, it’s the first touch that

genuinely feels over-the-top in a movie that expertly manages to balance the opulence

of incalculable wealth with the pragmatic, well-grounded sensibility embodied by its

heroine, Rachel Chu, a middle-class economics professor who discovers that her

Singapore-born boyfriend is not just handsome but worth more than the GDP of most

countries.

The Young family of Crazy Rich Asians is, for lack of a better word, quite

wealthy. They’re well-off. One might say they have oodles of money. There’s no

ignoring the obvious here—the Youngs are absurdly rich, to the point where merely

being close to them is exciting enough to serve as the premise of a major summer

novel. Though Crazy Rich Asians is rightly being lauded for its groundbreaking nature,

it’s also a charming throwback to the kind of story Americans doesn’t tell much

anymore: the high-society comedy, rife with family drama, acidic one-liners, and

indomitable female characters.

Crazy Rich Asians is about Rachel Chu, a Chinese American economics

professor at NYU who has a nice boyfriend named Nick Young. Casually at dinner,

Nick mentions that his friend is getting married back home in Singapore and that

Rachel should come with him and finally meet his family. The request seems innocent
enough—but then off in the distance, a lady in a stunning houndstooth shawl snaps a

picture of the couple and texts it to her friends. Suddenly, the photo spread as the

entirety of Singapore’s upper crust tries to figure out who this mystery woman in Nick

Young’s life could be.

That’s because Nick is the scion of the richest and oldest family on the wealthy

island nation, and Rachel is about to walk into a hornet’s nest without realizing it. The

bulk of Crazy Rich Asians’ two-hour running time sees her navigating the myriad egos

and personalities at play in the Young family: the gossiping aunts, Nick’s power-hungry

cousins, the imperious matriarch Eleanor, and the equally imperious (but more

outwardly kind) grand-matriarch Shang Su Yi.

It’s largely a blast, anchored by an extremely confident lead performance from

Wu. This isn’t a story about Rachel being tempted by Nick’s riches and getting drawn

into the power plays that might come with trying to secure them. Rachel is just in town

to meet the folks. She’s secure in her own identity and in the strength of her

relationship with Nick (who’s somewhat bland but very lovable all the same); it’s

everyone else who sees her as an intruder.

The sometimes hyperactive dialogues lays out the book’s stakes with the help

of Goh Peik Lin, Rachel’s friend from college who belongs to a much gaudier “new

money” Singaporean family. The wealth of the Youngs, Peik Lin explains, is rooted in

Singapore’s postcolonial history. For the Youngs, the idea of the family heir marrying

an American simply won’t do, no matter how charming or accomplished Rachel is. As

Eleanor later explains, Americans are cursed with wanting to pursue their own

happiness; to the Youngs, that value ranks a distant second to family tradition.
 Yeoh is perfectly cast as Rachel’s foil; she’s a commandingly cool movie star

who can show just the right hint of sublimated emotion when necessary. The book’s

first scenario is a prologue set in London where a stuffy hotel concierge tries to deny

the Young family service, after which Eleanor quickly, and cleanly, exacts her

revenge—just so the viewer knows what a hard case she is. She’s an adversary

deserving of the greatest respect, and her steeliness prompts Rachel to try harder to

prove her worth.