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A review by alongapath
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
4.0
This was a fun romp into the almost sci-fi world. Charlie Gordon is a special-needs adult who desperately wants to be smart and has an opportunity to have a leading-edge brain surgery to increase his I.Q. The surgery has been successful in mice, especially in one named Algernon, and the changes in Charlie are similar and immediate.
Told through his Progress Reports, we see advances in Charlie's grammar and writing and he quickly surpasses the intelligence of the doctors and professors who are monitoring him. He absorbs knowledge, languages and complex theories at such an amazing rate that he is suddenly in a world of his own at the other end of the I.Q. scale. One area that seems untouched by the surgery is his understanding of human relationships and he fumbles along with feelings of love, lust and compassion.
He is appalled at how his medical team view him as a subject who had nothing before the intervention. He is able to remember childhood situations and conversations with amazing attention to detail and painfully realises that he has known more all along than anyone guessed. In the height of his brilliance, Charlie discovers a fatal flaw in his team's research and he begins to observe the quick deterioration of Algernon. Knowing what his own fate will bring, he madly tries to prepare for the new unknown as he slides back to his former self.
I was so surprised to see that this was written in 1966. It is timeless and powerful.
Told through his Progress Reports, we see advances in Charlie's grammar and writing and he quickly surpasses the intelligence of the doctors and professors who are monitoring him. He absorbs knowledge, languages and complex theories at such an amazing rate that he is suddenly in a world of his own at the other end of the I.Q. scale. One area that seems untouched by the surgery is his understanding of human relationships and he fumbles along with feelings of love, lust and compassion.
He is appalled at how his medical team view him as a subject who had nothing before the intervention. He is able to remember childhood situations and conversations with amazing attention to detail and painfully realises that he has known more all along than anyone guessed. In the height of his brilliance, Charlie discovers a fatal flaw in his team's research and he begins to observe the quick deterioration of Algernon. Knowing what his own fate will bring, he madly tries to prepare for the new unknown as he slides back to his former self.
I was so surprised to see that this was written in 1966. It is timeless and powerful.