I’m sure you’ve seen a person like this, at least one day in your life. You know, a person that seems to be normal, this person look banal, speak normaly at first, but when you talk a little bit longer with him, you know, you feel that there is something wron with this person. He speak about thing that you don’t anderstand, or when you speak, this person seems shy or exciting for everything and nothing. You are touched by this person, because you know that he doesn’t anderstand what he’s doing, wrong or right, but some others are nasty, and it hurts you, maybe you are angry or disgust, because people laught at a person that don’t anderstand, don’t know, this person. In a way this person is not responsible for what he did. But sometimes, you can’t restrain yourself, you laught with them. The only thing you hope for the mentally disabled, is that he becames sound of mind. You now that’s impossible for some cases, but you hope.

Well, that what you feel when you read this book. Flowers for Algernon is not an easy book to read. At every moment, you hope for the main character, Charlie Gordon, to evolve and succeed, or defend himself. No spoil but… sad story. In short, this story relate a small part of the life of Charlie but not least : the part when he becomes the subject of a psychological experiment which aims to make him became « smart ». So because he have to maintain a personal dairy, we read his evolution through his eyes. You will know later if you decide to read the book, why it’s cruel.

In this book, Daniel Keyes, the author of this science fiction novel, expresses the cruality of this world. He was an university psychology researcher and he also wrote The minds of Billy Milligan, The Milligan wars and The asylum prophecies, to develop his works he wrote some other books, like complementary works, one for the story of Algernon, and an other for Milligan. He was born in 1927 and died in 2014, so we can easily say that it’s a modern novel and a coeval author.

I couldn’t have read the stories of his second character yet, but when I will have enough time I will do it, because his first character really touched me, I don’t want to spoil you the end, but as Of Mice and Men that’s a very hard story to read and really sad,  we learn a lot at the end.

In my opinion, this kind of books open the mind of the teenagers or the adultes, wich is important for the future of our society.