The Primroses Were Over

‘‘Charlie, we accept the love we think we deserve.’’

This was a rough read in quite a few ways, but I really enjoyed it.

It deals with quite a few taboo (at least in YA) subjects, but it does so carefully and realistically. Charlie is certainly not a common teenager, but he reads as a teenager all the same, dealing with things as best he can in the wild world of high school, making friends and trying new things and always managing to be himself, which is a very hard line to walk.

The first hint we have that Charlie is a bit off in some way is the writing itself, which manages to portray his thoughts and his lack of understanding rather perfectly. He is clever and thoughtful, but definitely misses quite a bit, and there are a few potential reasons for it brought up throughout.

This is going to be one of those books that either resonates with you and your experiences or doesn't. If it doesn't, Charlie is going to be boring, or the writing is going to be boring, or the whole story is going to be boring. If it does resonate with you, something will click and you'll remember what things were like, how it felt to be an outsider, even if the specifics of Charlie's experiences do not apply (and I do hope that all of them do not apply to anyone reading this--this is a seriously rough book for the boy). It does manage to capture that feeling of not being sure about what is going on around you, of being the proverbial (and titular) wallflower in circumstances beyond your understanding.

It could probably be hit with a charge of being overly-packed with emotional trauma, but somehow that worked well here, I felt. It manages to hit on quite a few subjects and filters them through Charlie, who does not always understand the social implications of what is going on and thus negates some of the effects of the trauma.

In the end, I liked it quite a bit, and I wish I had managed to read it as a teenager, where it would probably have hit even closer to home.