Daniel Keyes

Flowers for Algernon

Gollancz, 2002    [SF, Eng, A1]

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Charlie Gordon, IQ68, is a floor sweeper, and the gentle butt of everyone’s jokes, until an experiment in the enhancement of human intelligence turns him into a genius.

But then Algernon, the mouse whose triumphal experimental transformation preceded his, fades and dies, and Charlie has to face the possibility that his salvation was only temporary.

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The story is not as open to hope and uncertainty as the word ‘possibility’ embedded into the short synopsis of the book might imply. Because the most heartbreaking consequence of having become a genius is that Charlie Gordon is able to realize that his genius-status isn’t going to last, and he has to live with that consciousness, waiting for the inevitable...

This book is just that: a very sad story, very hard to read, and very difficult to stand while it develops up to its end.

And, though only a science fiction novel, a story which makes one think, and worry, and fear.

Because it isn’t that far from reality: how hellish may life probably become, if a person affected by Alzheimer’s disease happens to be really conscious of his illness?