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Summary: Flowers for Charlie
Review: In Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon, Charlie is faced with many situations in which he wants to be treated like a normal human being. He is often made fun of because of his disability. One day he meets a girl in which he later falls in love with named Beth. In the end his wanting to be like everyone else leads to his death. Flowers for Algernon is a very compassionate book filled with love, hate, and the want for reading more.
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Summary: The story of a mentally retarded man made into a genius
Review: A mentally retarded custodian, Charlie Gordon is offered a second chance in life. Through a break through new surgical technique, Charlie's IQ is tripled, leaving him a genius with the emotional development of an six year old. This novel, originally a short story, is a tale about learning to grow up. A touching story for all ages, Charlie's story inspires and touches the hearts of the readers.
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Summary: Do you fear madness, loss of coherence and sanity?
Review: We all fear madness, loss of our coherence and sanity. At least all of us who are sane fear these things. There, I've hooked you. You've got to read on now, or you're not sane ... Losing the brilliance of youth, of success or of dreams we once held bright in our minds - these common fears also haunt us.
The narrator of 'Flowers for Algernon, Charlie, a mentally handicapped man, burns from dim to bright. From candle stub he turns, or is turned, to a nova and then to a guttering candle he returns. And all the while he is aware of his condition.
I cried when I first read the book - perhaps because I egotistcally thought I was once as bright as Charlie at his best. In truth I'm dull and average and dimly aware of the brilliance of this book. As is Charlie dimly aware of what he once was when he finally fades from genius to low IQ. Read it. Despair. Be hopeful. Be admiring. As you please. But read it.
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Summary: A potent look at many aspects of humanity.
Review: The layers that are examined by this sometimes joyous, sometimes sorrowful novel have to be read to be believed. I can't believe how many emotions Daniel Keyes pulled out of me, he is a master. I just wish that he'd written more.
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Summary: Brilliantly touching
Review: There are those who have attempted the topic before, to show the good or ill about artificially increasing a man's intelligence, and they have all fallen by the wayside, forgotten entries in the arena of literature, all because they forgot one factor: love.
In Flowers for Algernon, Keyes shows us a man who is jolted out of his comfortable world of stupidity and finds his friends who were not as good as he thought they were, that all he thought was nothing more than a veiled illusion. And he copes, as everyone must, he copes and finds love and comes to term with himself.
Just in time for him to realize that his intelligence is only temporary. In the most heart wrenching scenes of the novel, the reader must witness his intelligence fading rapidly, each journal entry a little less exact, the spelling a tiny bit worse, until the book comes full circle and he is back where he started from, only having a wisdom that he cannot understand, or comprehend.
Touching, moving, Flowers for Algernon is all that and more, it is an epic of emotion, an opera of getting what you want most and then realizing that you might have been better off.
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Summary: I really enjoyed and understood the book.
Review: Charlie was the deepest and most interestingly portrayed characters I have ever read about. His struggles, his memories, his fears at the sudden change in his itellectual and social status all became real. I felt like he was the retarded person who we all know and laugh at, and this book makes us think twice about that. It was very stirring
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Summary: Are you smart? Are you stupid? Are you somewhere in between?
Review: Then this is the book for you. If you've ever felt isolated, different, unable to connect with anyone and wished for a solution (and haven't we all?) then this is a must-read. It's more than a "be-careful-what-you-wish-for" book. The many deep psychological undertones and all-too-realistic betrayal of a man's rise and fall make this an absolute must read
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Summary: A parachute jump of emotions
Review: This book is a parachute jump of emotions,After an operation to improve the mind of a low-level IQ person you grow with the increase in mind power and take joy in his accomplishments. When you reach the ending you are heart is wrenched and your eyes full of tears. This book is a must for anyone who has a heart
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Summary: For further information, check the Daniel Keyes webpage.
Review: The Daniel Keyes webpage includes: bibliography, biography,
and answers to FAQ's.
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Summary: Wonderful book
Review: The author's style is incredibly effective in more ways than one. The book is written in the format of a diary, and it's really quite neat to see Charlie's spelling & vocabulary go from
mediocre to excellent and the regression of it. Flowers for Algernon is incredibly thought provoking, making you
think of things that you've probably not thought of before, (if it doesn't affect you already) : mental retardation.
This book brought tears in my eyes
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