I couldn’t write about literature without presenting one of my (or maybe the only one) favourite books:

The Perks of being a Wallflower

By Stephen Chbosky

Maybe you already saw the film adapted from the book, starring Logan Lerman, Ezra Miller and Emma Watson. A pretty convincing adaptation which ranks the film as one of my favourites.

The Perks of being a Wallflower is an epistolary novel about Charlie, a shy and socially awkward teenager. In high school, he makes friend with Patrick and his step-sister Sam and discover a world of laughing, alcohol, drugs, blossoming loves and darks secrets. This book is about life and death, love and fear. The one we feel when we’re alone with our thoughts.

I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like that. That you wanted to sleep for a thousand years. Or just not exist. Or just not be aware that you do exist. Or something like that. I think wanting that is very morbid, but I want it when I get like this. That’s why I’m trying not to think. I just want it all to stop spinning.

On the way, a caring teacher, a worried sister and weird friends. Answers to questions that haunt him when he sees the people he cars about being hurt by what they think is love. “Charlie, we accept the love we think we deserve”, says his teacher.

The beaut of the novel resides in the veracity of the characters and their nearly-universal questionings. I think we all find a piece of Charlie in ourselves, our present or past selves because after all, we all were different people before today, and we will be different people after that.

And there are people who forget what it’s like to be sixteen when they turn seventeen. I know these will all be stories some day, and our pictures will become old photographs. We all become somebody’s mom or dad. But right now, these moments are not stories. This is happening.