Flowers for Algernon Can and Should Make You Cry
Written: Jul 15 '01 (Updated Apr 20 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Rich, emotive, powerful story which touches the readers heart.
Cons: Probably could have benefitted from being a longer work.
The Bottom Line: A beautiful, poetic book, on the nature of the human heart, and what it is to have personhood , whether your I.Q. be 68 or 200.
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| snpmurray's Full Review: Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon Books |
This book is simply wonderfully written. It moved me deeply.
Flowers for Algernon won a Nebula Award as a short story, and was later expanded into a full length novel by the author. I never read the short, but I have just finished the novel in a single sitting, and I was touched by it in a special way.
This book is the collected journals of Charlie Gordon...friendly, good-natured guy, I.Q. 68. Charlie has an unusual desire to learn for one so handicapped, and this brings him to the attention of scientists seeking a subject for a new surgical trial, designed to increase intelligence. Tentative success with the mouse Algernon, who becomes firm friends with Charlie, have encouraged them to try a human subject. Their surgery changes Charlie slowly but nearly completely. The book follows the turmoil that change brings to Charlies life and relationships.
Charlie goes from imbecile to genius, and we hear in his own words his experience of discovering the faculty of memory, and thereby painfully discovering his own past, which has lain dormant in his mind. He experiences adolescent growing pains as he struggles to match his emotions to his intellect. He is forced to finally confront the question of who he is, regardless of intelligence and faculty, in terms only of what it means to himself to have personhood.
There are many turns in this tale, and it is extremely emotional stuff. Daniel Keyes clearly has insight into the human condition, and is a writer of unusual skill. It is the depth of penetration into Charlies mind and life which Keyes presents to the reader which really impressed me about this book. How often does one develop enough empathy for a character within the first five pages of a book to be on the edge of tears?
Read this book, you won't regret it. It is full of wonderful observation and beauty. It is a humanistic tale of rare quality. Could I find higher praise?!
I see that Epinions only hit for the written form of "Flowers" is describing it as a novelette. My review is for the full-length novel you should note.
The book does contain fairly frank sexual references. I would recommend a reader of later adolescent maturity.
Some of my other science fiction book reviews:
Rama Revealed
Prelude to Space
Stand on Zanzibar
The Demolished Man
The Stars my Destination
Cat's Cradle
The Gods Themselves
Watchmen
A Canticle for Leibowitz
The Hammer of God
The Left Hand of Darkness
Flowers for Algernon
Lord of Light
Rendevous with Rama
The Tombs of Atuan
The Dispossessed
I am Legend
The Einstein Intersection
Earth Abides
Peace on Earth
The Farthest Shore
Methuselah's Children
A Call to Arms
To your Scattered Bodies Go
The Lion of Comarre / Against the Fall of Night
To Say Nothing of the Dog
The Doomsday Book
Frankenstein Unbound
Batman - The Dark Knight Returns
Imperial Earth
A Case of Conscience
Solaris
The Sands of Mars
The Land of Laughs
Eden
His Masters Voice
Citizen of the Galaxy
King David's Spaceship
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Double Star
The Fabulous Riverboat
Songs of Distant Earth
Way Station
The Fountains of Paradise
The Long Tomorrow
Lincolns Dreams
Alas Babylon
More Than Human
1984
The Forever War
All the Myriad Ways
I Sing the Body Electric
Gateway
Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said
This Immortal
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Recommended:
Yes
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snpmurray
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Location: Sedona, Arizona
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