Audio book, 9 hours, perfectly narrated by Jeff Woodman. This was an amazingly captivating story about transformation and self discovery. I cared for the main characters, and the story was neither too short or too long.

Merged review:

Audio book, 9 hours, perfectly narrated by Jeff Woodman. This was an amazingly captivating story about transformation and self discovery. I cared for the main characters, and the story was neither too short or too long. ( )

Read: Flowers for Algernon, Daniel F Keyes

This seems to be one of those science fiction novels most people know about, even if they haven’t actually read it. Perhaps because it was adapted into a movie in 1968, Charly. But I suspect it’s more because its central premise is one that resonates - although it hasn’t been used all that often, I think (the only other example that comes to mind is Thomas M Disch’s Camp Concentration). The Algernon of the title is a mouse whose intelligence has been artificially boosted through surgery and drugs. The experimenters get permission to use the same technique on a human being, a man called Charlie Gordon who has an IQ below 70. The experiment is a success and Charlie develops into a genius. Unfortunately, as Charlie soon discovers himself, the effect is not permanent. The novel is told through Charlie’s journal entries, initially childish and misspelt and ungrammatical, but becoming analytical and introspective and dropping references to the genius level things Charlie is now capable of doing. The novel is an expansion of a short story, initially published in 1959, but didn’t itself appear until 1966. It is clearly set in the 1950s - lots of mentions of cafeterias, for example (thankfully no mention of hats) - and while it could at a stretch take place in the present day, at one point genius Charlie visits a home for the mentally impaired, where he also briefly lived before the experiment, and the home has thousands of patients, a number I found somewhat boggling. I admit the basics of the story are affecting, but its setting, and its sensibilities, reminded me far too much of JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, a book I studied at school and hated. I can see why Flowers for Algernon has such a high profile - it’s one of a handful of US science fiction novels to have been taught in US schools - but it’s still an historical document and I suspect it’s better regarded as not a science fiction novel. ( )

I've heard a few statements about how intelligence doesn't always go along with happiness. This book beautifully explains why.

It opens with a very choppy, phonetic narrative style that represents the early reports of a man (Charlie) about to undergo an experiment to increase his intelligence. The text alters as the experiment takes affect, and we see the changes happening in Charlie's perspective and character.

I'm not sure how much more I can really say without risking spoiling things. I read this book because my father suggested it to me and it's also on the "staff's choice" shelf at my local indie bookstore. It's not a long book, and well worth the read, but it is sad in ways. Fair warning. ( )

Sentimentality is the book’s main draw. We feel for Charlie when he slowly realizes he was once retarded. We feel for Charlie as he remembers being bullied. We feel for Charlie when his mother can’t accept him being different. We feel for Charlie when he has trouble connecting with women. Again, making readers feel something is no mean feat at all, and Keyes deserves credit for that.

The novel’s themes by themselves are not superficial: what does intelligence do to a person? What does being smarter than most people around you do to someone? How are emotions and intelligence correlated? I’m sure lots of brainy people that read lots of books have bumped into these questions as teenagers, and possibly in their later lives as well.

But sadly this novel doesn’t show a lot of insight in the human condition – not that Keyes doesn’t have ambition, opening his novel with a quote from Plato’s Republic. Yet the end result is more philosophical soap opera than probing analysis: it seems as if the book only adds plot & emotion to the original short story, not so much ideas.

(...)

Full review on Weighing A Pig Doesn't Fatten It ( )

dopo quasi 5 anni è apparso un like su questa valutazione, non ricordando cosa avessi scritto sono venuta a vedere e ho trovato il nulla! 4 parole in croce per un romanzo che ho adorato (scuoto la testa sconsolata)
cinque anni è anche il tempo che mi ci è voluto per rendermi conto che questo spazio non serve soltanto per rinfrescare la memoria a me stessa: a volte qualcun altro legge
quindi, Lettore Probabile (amico o sconosciuto che tu sia) la recensione ufficiale è questa:

impattante, potente, straniante, straziante
da leggere assolutamente

APPUNTI PER LA MEMORIA:
ritardato/genio
esperimento scientifico ( )