Kenny 19/09/2024
Once in a yellow piece of paper with blue lines
I've been wanting to read this book since I was 13/14 years old. I loved the movie so badly so I really had high expectations. I was on cloud nine when I bought it.
But here are some thoughts on the novel: the format feels very personal, almost like somebody is whispering a secret and you feel like a character in the story, especially because Charlie tells his experiences through letters and the reader is the one receiving them, because he chose to send it to you.
We find that Charlie is a freshman and he has been through a lot. His best friend committed suicide the prior year, his aunt Helen died in a car crash when he as a kid and there's lot of blame involved. He ends up having a hard time making friends, building relationships. In the narrative, we get to navigate his emotions and situations he's never been before. He's very sensitive and extremely sensible, he overthinks way too much and way too often, but he's very thoughtful and intelligent.
It had everything to be a big cliche, it kinda is, but it is really touching, and you can't help feeling empathy towards most of the characters.
I don't have much to say anymore so I'm just going to leave here a part of a poem that Charlie reads during secret Santa, which works in summarizing the vibe of the book:
"once on a paper torn from his notebook
he wrote a poem
and he called it "Innocence: A Question"
because that was the question about his girl
and that's what it was all about
and his professor gave him an A
and a strange steady look
and his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because he never showed her
that was the year Father Tracy died
and he forgot how the end
of the Apostles's Creed went
and he caught his sister
making out on the back porch
and his mother and father never kissed
or even talked
and the girl around the corner
wore too much make up
that made him cough when he kissed her
but he kissed her anyway
because it was the thing to do
and at 3 am he tucked himself into bed
his father snoring soundly"