Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

This book concerns a very good-natured man called Charlie who has a very low IQ. Not only can he not understand much of what goes on, he also can't remember much. But he does have a very strong desire to learn and so he takes himself to adult education classes to improve his Literacy and there a university department finds him and tests him to assess his suitability for a new treatment. The treatment has never been tested on a human before: it has only been tested on a white mouse called Algernon, who is now a very smart mouse indeed..

The new treatment turns out to be an operation that improves his brain power amazingly. It does not happen overnight and at first Charlie is disappointed, but gradually he realises how much cleverer he is. He becomes more intelligent than his work mates, his teacher and eventually the professor. At the same time, he starts to remember. He remembers why his parents put him in a home and how cruel his mother and his sister were to him - how they lacked any empathy. He realises that his workmates were not as friendly as he thought they were. So as he gets cleverer, he also gets more bitter. Charlie goes on an emotional journey as his memories come back, and one of the amazing things about the book is this: it is all written in the first person. this is a great achievement because Charlie's voice changes a great deal throughout the book.

He wants to confront his mother with the intelligent person he has become. Ironically, he finds his mother has lost her mental ability to dementia - she sweeps up her kitchen floor for comfort just as he used to sweep the bakery. How eloquently this shows us that none of us are can afford to pride ourselves on our mental powers.

Charlie seems to be such a success for the scientists that they want to take him to conferences and show him off. Charlie hates being treated as an object of curiosity, and takes Algernon and runs away. At about this time Algernon starts to lose his intelligence...

This book has some impassioned pleading for treating people of low IQ as sentient human beings and not being ashamed of them. It has a great many lessons to teach us about kindness and tolerance. And it is an excellent, readable book with many subtle parallels and ironies in it.