Dammit, Charlie. You made me cry, you beautiful man.

Jeez this was a brutal read. A really great concept, a considered and clean execution and a just heart breaking end.

"Please, if you get a chance, put some flowers on Algernon's grave in the backyard."

The last PS got me. What the...

Charlie Gordon, I hope you are contented with your life now. This is such a great book! So satisfying that I get to see and understand when he is having a transition.

No more words. It's just one of the best books for me!

What a deeply moving story that sounds impressively contemporary, in spite of being conceived nearly 70 years ago. I did not expect it to impact me as much as it did but it is incredibly effective in its examination of its themes, such as the treatment of people with mental illnesses and disabilities, personhood and authonomy; how an arbitrary perception of intelligence can affect the relationships of an individual with the world around them - friends, colleagues, lovers; even the battle between IQ and EQ (the term for which would be coined around the time of the publishing of the novel but not popularised until much later).

And in that, the heartbreak is unrelentness as the reader first sees how the people around Charlie treat him, and then sees him realise how he is being treated, and then sees him eventually regress in his mental ability.

On a more personal level, I found that the book spoke to me through one of my biggest fears. When I was a child, one of our neighbours had a son who had been exceptionally intelligent. But he had had an unfortunate accident - I was too little to remember the precise details - that had damaged his brain, regressing him severely. And while he still retained a not insignificant level of independence, this greatly limited his ability to navigate the world on his own. We moved away nearly 20 years ago but I often wonder what happened to him and his mother - I remember hearing from my grandma that she had not been well.

Somewhere between this and the fact that I have, as a child, often been complimented on my intelligence, I gained this deep-seated fear of a diminishing mental capability - be it through injury or just the natural aging process or anything else. And frankly, sometimes I fear that this may have already been set off by the recent pandemic. But I have also been thinking about what this fear says about myself and about the society we live in.

Such a sad and heartbreaking story. I had so many insights and thoughts while reading this masterpiece that somehow when I finished, I found myself without words to describe the experience and clinching to the narrative, missing him throughout the day when I didn't had his company anymore. Charlie was one of the most complex and interesting characters I have ever known.

i read this while i was going through some of the worst chronic pain of my life that granted me the incredible ability of having ✨lapses of memory✨ and an ✨inability to focus well✨ and tragically related to this book. at the peak of my life too, flowers for algernon is a must read and a saddening tale about the human condition. bring tissues

This was genius, because i hated it, but i loved how i hated it.

I remember disliking this book in high school, and feeling very upset by it in a way that made me afraid to read it again for a very long time.

I'm glad I re-read it, but this book still breaks my heart, and it is once again the kind of book I probably couldn't read again for a long time.

★★★★★ Conforme a história avançava para o final meu emocional avançava para a depressão, foi quase assim... É um livro inicialmente muito interessante e que se desenvolve bem, senti muitas coisas em relação ao Charlie e me peguei me colocando no lugar dele várias vezes. Motivo de não ter dado favorito? Nem eu sei.

emotionally harmed me in a wonderful way

This was absolutely heartbreaking and beautiful.

It's such a beautifully written book. Keyes' choice of first person narrative through progress reports allows the reader to see his progression/regression in the most personal and touching way. It's so difficult not to get choked up reading that book. Recommended to everyone!!

I am really wondering how I did not come across this book earlier. It has a really interesting concept. The main protagonist is Charlie who is not really that intelligent. There is a new experimental operation which aims at increasing a persons IQ. Charlie is the first human being on whom the operation is tried on. To save you from the spoilers I will not continue telling the story, but the book is a really interesting look into what makes us who we are and the part of society we take. What is really interesting are the way the book is written. It is Charlies diary, where he writes what he sees and understands about the world. Daniel Keyes uses some non standard ways to convey the transformation Charlie is going through. During the course of the book we can see Charlies grammar, spelling and vocabulary change and it is fascinating how much can that metadata convey about a person. All in all, it is a interesting book, go and read it!

my heart is demolished and i will never be the same

Dear God, this book is sad.

** spoiler alert ** Meu coração está quebrado. Essa leitura me deu uma dor que não sentia há muito tempo. Acompanhar a jornada de Charlie machuca, não só pela tristeza que é vê-lo decaindo depois do experimento, mas ver como as pessoas ao redor dele o tratam, tanto antes como depois. Saber que esse é o cotidiano de milhões de pessoas no mundo é dolorido. Ainda não se fala muito de como o capacitismo é perigoso e doloso. Muitos acreditam que estão no direito de tratar deficientes dessa maneira por achar que eles não entenderão. Sei que algum dia devo ter feito algo semelhante também. O que mostra o quanto essa leitura é importante e deve ser obrigatória, deve ser usada como um caminho para a desconstrução. Muitas são as causas e as bandeiras que se levantam hoje em dia para as mais diversas minorias, mas devemos nos lembrar de lutar por aqueles que não conseguem também.

"Ripensandoci, ora, posso capire perchè mi è stato insegnato a tenermi lontano dalle donne. Ho fatto male ad esprimere i miei sentimenti per Alice. Non ho alcun diritto di pensare ad una donna in questo modo... non ancora.

Ma nel momento stesso in cui scrivo queste parole, qualcosa dentro di me grida che c'è di più. Sono una creatura umana. Ero una creatura umana prima di essere sottoposto al bisturi del chirurgo. E devo amare qualcuno."

this book destroyed me 4 stars

This is a beautiful book about the journey of learning. There are a lot of parallels with Plato's Allegory of the cave. I would highly recommend reading the Allegory prior to starting this book.

it’s reputation superseded itself so fell the book short to me. this was in part bc of design as the most emotionally compelling parts of the novel (where we knew things charlie didn’t yet understand) were transitory, but also because of inconsistencies and other parts that required suspension of disbelief (the bakery men defending charlie when he came back, the one dimensional researchers, lots of details about fay, other charlie watching, etc) which detracted from the overall message of love being what makes someone human. this might also because I read song of Achilles right after and had the two as direct comparisons for their similar heroes cycles and the romance v self dilemma, but it was overall still a very enjoyable read

I kept putting this off for years, merely because the general consensus was - its about a mouse and a dude, meh it can wait. I couldn't have been more wrong. Often a time human beings put an irrational but sometimes justifiable weight on this thing called intellectuality. How smart is your kid, do they fit inside the box. A child gowing up, is expected to be smart, studious, enough so as to fit into the society. If not, it is out of "normality", you arent normal. Only when we grow up do we realise the true things that maketh a person, kindess, gratitude, affection, empathy - far superior than a grade. It was like seeing through, not lens, but multiple reflections. Who decides even the kind of person we become, do we even have a say in who we become; do we even know to question what makes us whole?

Picked this up at a local secondhand bookstore at random. A literary masterpiece full of emotional and philosophical depth. Will undoubtedly tug at your heart, but oddly enough, I didn’t cry while reading this, as many before me had. Maybe it’s because I have been facing somewhat of a similar situation in my own life, and I just wanted to find solace in the fact that I’m not alone in this treacherous journey.

man, that was so sad. it gave me a newfound perspective on human intellect and how it changes people, the mentally disabled, and how privileged we are as educated people with fully functioning brains and wow this book. it was so enlightening and wise. damn. it just felt so genuine and human. that was so. good.

the realizations he had about humanity before and after his intelligence was honestly so eye-opening. such a good book.

keyes isn't smart enough to write a smart person and can't write a dumb person either - or a woman that isn't a stock character. interesting concept, horribly flat execution marred by a dated and myopic perspective