Daniel Keyes' Flowers for Algernon

Flowers For Algernon

by Daniel Keyes

I live two blocks from a Barnes & Noble, so I go there often just to peruse the aisle. Upon a table on new paperbacks, I stumbled over Flowers for Algernon. My friend told me she had heard it was very good, and wanted to read it also. That evening I came home with Keyes' book but did not read it until a few weeks after, because I had to finish The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, which was a intricately descriptive adventure, well worth the read.

Flowers for Algernon is a heartbreaking story about Charlie a mentally challenged man who wants to be smart. He goes through a radical experimental operation to achieve his goal to be like other people. His dilemma is not in my perspective to become smart, but to understand whom he is, and maintaining the newfound ability, he has acquired. Flower for Algernon is a mind-provoking book; it leaves you with a new perspective of life, and the people you have encounter throughout your life. A book called to be read at one sitting, because your mind is demanding you to know what happens next.