Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Charlie Gordon is 32 years old and has an IQ of 68. He holds a job at Donners bakery as a delivery boy and attends Beekman College Center for Retarded Adults, where he is learning to read and write. Charlie has been picked to have a special operation that may allow him to be the first person to their intelligence increased. The researchers have performed this same operation on a special mouse named Algernon and it has been extremely successful. Charlie has always wanted to be smart and this is his chance.

Charlie is asked to document his journey, his thoughts, feelings, and memories as progress reports or journal entries. It isn’t long before Charlie is reading multiple languages and acquiring knowledge that far surpasses that of the doctors responsible for his success. But have they done enough research into the side effects and lasting potential of the experiment? Will Charlie forever be a new man or is he only a flower, which will bloom and then fade away?