Subject: Review: Keyes' _Flowers for Algernon_

From: [email-masked] (Paul S Jenkins)
Date: 27 Jul 1998 15:27:28 -0400

_Flowers for Algernon_ by Daniel Keyes
	Review Copyright (c) 1998 Paul S. Jenkins

[Contains a semi-spoiler for the ending, if there's still folks out there
who don't know how this fine poignant book ends.  --AW]

_Flowers for Algernon_ is the story of Charlie, a simple bakery assistant
who is selected for a radical new surgery. The experimental operation he
undergoes is designed to improve his intelligence.

The book takes the form of Charlie's journal, and the narrative is
therefore entirely first-person. Keyes has taken a single, simple science-
fictional idea -- the 'what if?' -- and applied it to human intelligence.
What if a man's intelligence were to be radically improved, from lowly but
contented simpleton, to incisive but emotionally inexperienced near-
genius?

Charlie tells us his story with disarming frankness, his written style
transforming before our eyes as the results of the operation take
effect. His emerging intelligence is visible on the page.

Starting as an educationally sub-normal menial worker, lacking social
skills and self-esteem, Charlie matures into an outwardly self-assured,
articulate man. But he lives constantly with the threat that his
artificially accelerated intelligence might desert him.

It's a deeply moving story, which touches many of our contemporary
concerns, despite being first published in 1959: the ethics of human
experimentation; the essence of self; the issue of informed consent.  It's
also an intensely personal story. We see everything through Charlie's
eyes, and we sympathize as the people around him react very differently
during his metamorphosis.

_Flowers for Algernon_ is a novel of change, and of stasis. The inevitable
end -- more a reversal than a climax -- leaves one aching for a different
outcome, knowing that such an outcome is impossible.

%A   Keyes, Daniel
%T   Flowers for Algernon
%I   Indigo (Cassell)
%C   London
%D   1996 (copyright 1959, 1966)
%G   ISBN 0 575 40020 X
%P   216 pp.
%O   paperback, GBP 5.99