HE DIES AT THE END.
I’d love to say it is rare for a novel to stimulate an emotional response in me, but it ‘s not true. I’ll regularly weep on the train, laugh out loud on the beach, growl and shake my fist in business class. Most recently this occurred with “All the light you cannot see”, previously “The Road” left me with shuddering shoulders and claims to have something in my eye. Flowers for Algernon left me angry at the author, frustrated at the story, grumbling whilst making coffee on a Sunday morning.
The title of my review harks back to the inevitability of the novel, strongly hinted at by the title. The inescapable journey of the protagonist, Charlie Gordon, with his fellow genius, Algernon the mouse, is the source of the frustration and the marvellous journey he undertakes throughout the novel. Thanks to the title and the back cover, we know the outcome and spend most of the reading seeking hope that there is redemption for Charlie, perhaps his genius, intellect, memory and knowledge will find a cure for his predestined decline. We are frustrated.
The reader is easily entranced by the writing style, and the evolution of the grammar, spelling and vocabulary in the first few chapters rather surprisingly fails to annoy, largely because of the speed with which it develops and the ease with which we can empathise with the subject. This is countered by the speed with which the language decays at the end of the novel, perhaps largely because by then the reader knows what is destined for Charlie.There is no need to protract the conclusion.
Charlie is an emotional child at the start of the novel and we watch his intellectual development far outstrip his emotional development during the course of the novel. As I watch my own children develop both emotionally and intellectually, I see the time it takes to learn from their mistakes, develop wisdom and establish emotional intelligence. The latest software developers wonder why artificial intelligence is so elusive, and Charlie demonstrates here that data and memory do not translate into wisdom and empathy.
One of the key frustrations as a reader results from Charlie squandering his intellect on sex and drugs (though sadly pitifully little rock ’n’ roll), and his failure to cure his own destiny. His primary erudite output is the diagnosis of his and Algernon’s retrograde condition, the Algernon-Gordon effect. This is the pinnacle of the cynicism of this story, which ultimately does nothing more than reflect the human condition and describe this mortal coil.
Eric’s analogy of life as a journey along a seesaw works very well. To some degree, all members of the JFDI are surfing the seesaw, at an age where we work ourselves hard to prevent the inevitable decline into old age. We all battle the future in our own way, all of us on one side of the fulcrum or the other, all at a point where we have furthest to fall and the most work to do to maintain equilibrium. The young and old enjoy a stable grounding of the seesaw, not far to fall, no rocking or balancing – all good but not much fun. This is perhaps why this novel received such a mixed response from the group, as we each responded in our own way according to our position relative to the fulcrum.
Towards the end of the novel, Charlie has embraced his outcome, has reviewed the home in which he’ll spend his last days and said goodbye in his own way to the people he knows he will forget. His journey is a metaphor for life. His peak output is a commentary on his own condition. We all squander our lives on alcohol, sex and pastimes that would be considered wasteful by otherworldly onlookers. Charlie forces the reader to consider doing more, but shows us that ultimately our lives are pretentious, fruitless and arrogant.
5 stars from me and 4.2 average score from the JFDI for an elegant and imaginative writing style, an unstoppable inevitability and an encapsulation of the human condition, where happiness is ultimately derived from simple friendships.
