Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1968, Pan)
238 pages
English language
Published Jan. 5, 1968 by Pan.
Until he was thirty-two, Charlie Gordon --gentle, amiable, oddly engaging-- had lived in a kind of mental twilight. He knew knowledge was important and had learned to read and write after a fashion, but he also knew he wasn't nearly as bright as most of the people around him. There was even a white mouse named Algernon who outpaced Charlie in some ways. But a remarkable operation had been performed on Algernon, and now he was a genius among mice. Suppose Charlie underwent a similar operation... ([source][1])
This was part of my middle school curriculum. I initially read it in seventh grade and a few times later in my early teens. This is one of the few books that I have a full memory of. It haunted me. It still does. Is it better to have something and lose it or never have it at all?
This was a great book! It is clear why it won so many awards. You know the conclusion almost immediately, but the tale is gripping and interesting enough for you to see how it gets there. Flowers for Algernon is about love, loss, and most importantly self-discovery. My only complaint is that the book is a bit slow to start with all the bad grammar but that comes with the territory. All in all recommended.
Goodness gracious. So many themes are touched on in this book, and I think I'll be haunted for some time to come by the ideas raised.
I'm a sucker for both an epistolary-style novel (which this classifies as, given the diary format) and the bildungsroman genre which I can also see reflected in the type of story it is, albeit not perfectly—so if either of those butter your biscuits well dangit bring out the tea cause these biscuits are ready to be eaten, buttered and all!!
Recommended read for many reasons, and not only because it's hard to let go of once started.
