Stephen Chbosky’s adolescent flashback, filled with pop culture references, is about learning who you are. It’s about freedom and liberation, exploring new things new relationships, and learning how each and every one of us has been built from our teenage traumas.
Set in the 80’s our narrator is Charlie, who chronicles the story of high freshman year in high school in the form of letters to an unknown recipient known only as “dear friend.” The recipient is known for being a good listener and very understanding, and Charlie feels compelled to share his most personal thoughts with this person, whether he reads the letters or not. This is how we are given our insight into Charlie’s life and his experiences.
Charlie lives with his mum, dad and his older sister. His mum and dad are loving and supportive and mostly keep to themselves. They are incredibly proud of Charlie, his sister and his older brother, a well known college football player, but they mostly keep to themselves throughout the book. Charlie’s sister is a popular and high achieving teenager, who is in an abusive relationship with her boyfriend. Charlie is beginning his freshman year of high school and is nervous. His best friend Michael committed suicide the year before and Charlie is struggling with his death as it reminds him of the loss of his favorite Aunt Helen some years earlier. In an effort not to spend the year alone, Charlie befriends seniors Patrick and his stepsister Sam. His introduction into their friendship group enables Charlie to experiment with alcohol, drugs and sex. Charlie’s drug use, and the complexity of his relationships and of those around him, soon begin to take their toll, forcing all of the repressed traumas that have built inside our narrator to erupt.
The novels focus on relationships is the key to understanding the story and forces you to analyze what it means to deserve love. Each of our main characters is suffering from some sort of “relationship trauma”, from being in an abusive relationship, to a secret relationship, to sexual abuse. Each character is forced to understand why they think those kinds of relationships are okay and why they feel like they don’t deserve better, come to terms with that and try and overcome it. This is particularly difficult for Charlie, as his combined traumas begin to cause increased psychological damage as the novel progresses. Charlie looks to those around him for guidance as he seeks out something for the first time, but is simply left confused by the examples that he is seeing. In the end it is the strength of personal relationships that give our characters courage. Once the sisters abuse relationship with her boyfriend ends, her relationship with Charlie improves significantly.
It’s a deeply personal book, with themes that will resonate particularly with young adults. This is not a book that is trashy or patronizing or self- centered. This is a book that is real. It talks about some of the darker, more painful things that teenagers can experience- body dysmorphia, homosexuality, sexual abuse, abortion- without making those incidences the main focus. The confusion, the desperation to be accepted and the fear of loneliness. We see these events through a teenagers eyes, which is what makes the book so special. It is easy to relate to and empathize with Charlie. With each page turned, the more relatable the book becomes. These stories are raw and they are identifiable.
It’s a very believable book which makes it easier to digest than other novels of the genre. Similar teen angst novels have a tendency to be a lot more shallow and self- absorbed and whiny. Chbosky doesn’t do that. Charlie’s letters allows us to see the world around him and understand the characters within that world, rather than just focus on events that are happening directly to him. We are absorbed in that world, we are reminded of that world, and we just want them all to come out okay in the end.
