Charlie Gordon is retarded and therefore gets picked as the first human subject for a treatment that can increase intelligence. As Charlie begins to get smarter, he also starts to notice that maybe intelligence isn't all that it's cracked up to be.

This is a wonderful book, but also deeply sorrowful. Charlie begins by thinking being smart is great, and expecting the new bursts of intelligence, but he has never had a chance to mature emotionally, so he ends up insulting everyone around him, a behavior that was tolerated earlier but not in a normal-intelligence person. Charlie is a very fleshed-out person, and the scientists around him are shown realistically with all their aloofness and pettiness.

The narrative trick of the book being presented as Charlie's written reports also works well. The writing starts as very bad, but keeps improving and becoming more complex as Charlie's intelligence increases. It also provides a window to Charlie's thoughts, his hopes and dreams, which start out lofty and naive, but end up being mostly bitter.

I've been wanting to read this for awhile, so I picked it up from the BC-table in Suomenlinna.

For sirah's library project in Gambia.

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