An extremely moving book; written in first person, through the eyes of Charlie Gordon, a mentally retarded adult who has
wanted to become "smart" his entire life. He is selected to become the first human subject in a remarkable brain surgery that could potentially increase his
intelligence exponentially. The experiment has already been performed on a white mouse, Algernon, who has become so intelligent that he can solve mazes in a matter of moments, beating the retarded Charlie every time. Faced with this life-changing proposition, Charlie
realizes that this holds the answer to his prayers, and he leaps to this opportunity almost heartbreakingly, despite being informed of all the risks.
Through his diary enteries, we are able to witness the metamorphosis of his intelligence, albeit subtley, through sentence structure, diction, and spelling. Very sadly, he soon realizes that increasing his I.Q is far from the answer to all his problems, rather, it turns his stable life upside down. He realizes that all the people that he had considered friends were making a constant mockery of him, gaining an ego boost from pushing him down. On top of that, he starts getting almost hallucinatory flashbacks to his childhood, which is filled with his mother's desperation for him to become a "normal" child, and the conflicts that his presence caused between his parents and his sister. Soon, his co-workers at the bakery which he had worked at all his grown life begin to become suspicious of his unnatural display of intelligence, as they are uninformed of the experiment. This eventually leads to his being fired, and the stability to his life completely shattered.
During his time, Charlie finds that he has fallen in love with his previous teacher at the Beekman College Center for Retarded Adults, Alice Kinnian, but to his extreme frustration, his mental growth has outstripped his emotional growth and he is as about smooth as a nervous teenager at any romantic interactions. He becomes more and more isolated as his mental development zooms forward, separating him from the rest of the world as he no longer considers them his level to interact with. Even Alice struggles to communicate with Charlie.
Charlie joins the team of neurosurgeons and psychiatrists that is working on the Algernon-Gorden project to increase intelligence, and delves deeply into the research. He finally finds a fatal flaw which has escaped every single other scientist: Artificially-induced intelligence deteriorates at a rate of time directly proportional to the quantity of the increase. This means that he will soon lose his intelligence at the rate that it was gained. Suddenly, Algernon starts to display erratic behavior and he is not able to solve the mazes as efficiently as before, instead he bumps into dead ends and becomes highly frustrated and aggressive. Eventually, they find him dead in his cage.
Before long, we are also able to witness Charlie's deterioration. He hunts down his family before he completely loses his intelligence and on a level, fulfills his mother's life long dream. The last few pages are deeply touching and sad, as Charlie reverts back to his old self. His last wish was for someone to lay flowers upon Algernon's grave that he had dug in his back garden.
This book is a deeply touching, bittersweet psychological journey, guaranteed to let the reader glimpse the world in a new dimension.