Category: books

‘The Four Winds’ by Kristin Hannah

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books

This novel focuses on the Dust Bowl, a time I think we’re slowly forgetting.

“The Bestselling Hardcover Novel of the Year.–Publishers Weekly

“From the number-one bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes a powerful American epic about love and heroism and hope, set during the Great Depression, a time when the country was in crisis and at war with itself, when millions were out of work and even the land seemed to have turned against them.

“’My land tells its story if you listen. The story of our family.’

“Texas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman’s only option, the future seems bleak. Until the night she meets Rafe Martinelli and decides to change the direction of her life. With her reputation in ruin, there is only one respectable choice: marriage to a man she barely knows.

“By 1934, the world has changed; millions are out of work and drought has devastated the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as crops fail and water dries up and the earth cracks open. Dust storms roll relentlessly across the plains. Everything on the Martinelli farm is dying, including Elsa’s tenuous marriage; each day is a desperate battle against nature and a fight to keep her children alive.

“In this uncertain and perilous time, Elsa―like so many of her neighbors―must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or leave it behind and go west, to California, in search of a better life for her family.

“The Four Winds is a rich, sweeping novel that stunningly brings to life the Great Depression and the people who lived through it―the harsh realities that divided us as a nation and the enduring battle between the haves and the have-nots. A testament to hope, resilience, and the strength of the human spirit to survive adversity, The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation.”

Washington Post Review

“When The Four Winds picks up again in 1934, we’re deep in the Great Depression, and Hannah lets her story bake under the cloudless sky. A conspiracy of bad weather, bad agriculture and bad government gradually desiccates the entire area, bringing one farm after another to ruin.

“The evaporation of water, the withering of seedlings, the boredom of unemployment — such calamities are not easy to dramatize, but as the drought grinds on, Hannah makes the heat radiate off these pages. And for sheer physical terror, she swirls up apocalyptic dust storms, ordeals of gritty insistence that last for days, transforming the landscape, burying homes and filling lungs. Faced with the possibility of starvation, Elsa must decide whether to stay on her land or head off to California, that oasis of milk and honey with jobs aplenty.” – Washington Post

—Malcolm

‘The Wind Thief’ by B. B. Griffith

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books

Book 4 in the Amazon #1 Best Selling Paranormal Suspense series!

The Author

B. B. Griffith was born and raised in Denver, Colorado and he still wanders Denver to this day. He’s the author of many best-sellers across several series, each unique, but with a common theme of modern magic and mystery. He’s been called an author of contemporary fantasy, an author of modern westerns, and an author of metaphysical thrillers. Sometimes all three at once. His novels have been called “rare and imaginative,” “full of lovable, memorable characters,” and his personal favorite: “A literary breath of fresh air.”

From the Publisher

“A dark wind gathers on Chaco Navajo reservation, deep in the heart of New Mexico. Grant Romer, the Keeper of the secret bell, can feel it pulling at his soul. Caroline and Owen work as hard as they can to treat the Navajo, but the dark wind brings a desperation to their clinic that is beyond western medicine.

“A stranger arrives ahead of the storm. A powerful medicine man from a faraway clan who goes by the name Jacob Dark Sky. He claims he can heal the people of Chaco with a song. Joey Flatwood and a handful of the other old-school Navajo aren’t so sure. They know Dark Sky isn’t what he seems, and that the cure he offers could end up destroying the very people it’s meant to help, right along with the reservation itself.

“To save their home, they will need help from every plane—the land of the living, the land of the dead, and the cold, thin-place between. With the dark wind tearing down everything around them, Grant, Caroline, Owen and Joey turn to Ben Dejooli—known as the Walker—for help.

“But the Walker has gone missing.”

The Series

‘The Waters’ by Bonnie Jo Campbell

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, writing

From the Publisher

“A master of rural noir returns with a fierce, mesmerizing novel about exceptional women and the soul of a small town.

“On an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp―an area known as “The Waters” to the residents of nearby Whiteheart, Michigan―herbalist and eccentric Hermine “Herself” Zook has healed the local women of their ailments for generations. As stubborn as her tonics are powerful, Herself inspires reverence and fear in the people of Whiteheart, and even in her own three estranged daughters. The youngest―the beautiful, inscrutable, and lazy Rose Thorn―has left her own daughter, eleven-year-old Dorothy

“Donkey” Zook, to grow up wild.”Donkey spends her days searching for truths in the lush landscape and in her math books, waiting for her wayward mother and longing for a father, unaware that family secrets, passionate love, and violent men will flood through the swamp and upend her idyllic childhood. Rage simmers below the surface of this divided community, and those on both sides of the divide have closed their doors against the enemy. The only bridge across the waters is Rose Thorn.”

From from Reviews

“Campbell, who lives outside Kalamazoo, Michigan, is one of American fiction’s leading voices about rural life: the struggle to make a living, the beauty of the wild environment, the thorny and sometimes violent relationships between men and women, and the economic and industrial pressures that threaten everything…filled with vivid descriptions of the diverse flora of this wetlands, The Waters is a realistic novel with a strong thread of fairy tale running through it[.] The Waters builds toward an incredible climactic episode that addresses the great divide running through this imperiled community.” ― Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Campbell has been exploring hardship, especially the hardships that independent and exploratory women have to work through, for most of her writing career. She knows that unexpected misfortunes have to be put up with, and the question is always whether to do it your own way or to give in to the people around you and embark on a life you do not want…The Waters is a thought-provoking and readable exploration of eccentricity and of all different kinds of love―familial love, romantic love, love of knowledge, love of animals, and love of one’s own environment, even when it is a difficult place to live.” ― Jane Smiley, Los Angeles Times Book Review

From the Writer

Bonnie Jo Campbell is an American Writer living with her husband and donkeys in rural Michigan.

Bonnie Jo Campbell is the author of the National Bestselling novel Once Upon a River (Norton, 2011), a river odyssey with an unforgettable sixteen-year-old heroine, which the New York Times Book Review calls “an excellent American parable about the consequences of our favorite ideal, freedom.” The book was optioned and developed into an award-winning feature film directed by Haroula Rose, which debuted in 2020.

Her first novel, Q Road, delves into the lives of a rural community where development pressures are bringing unwelcome change in the character of the land. Campbell’s critically acclaimed short fiction collection American Salvage (Wayne State University Press, 2009) was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critic’s Circle Award. The collection consists of fourteen lush and rowdy stories of folks who are struggling to make sense of the twenty-first century. She is also the author of Women and Other Animals, which won the AWP prize for short fiction; and the collection Mothers, Tell Your Daughters. Her story “The Smallest Man in the World” was awarded a Pushcart Prize and her story “The Inventor, 1972” was awarded the 2009 Eudora Welty Prize from Southern Review. She is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the Mark Twain Award from the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature.

–Malcolm

‘The Waters’ by Bonnie Jo Campbell

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, writing

Bonnie Jo Campbell (American Salvage, Q Road, Once Upon a River, Love Letters to Sons of Bitches) will release a new novel The Waters on January 9. Entertainment Weekly calls Campbell “a bard, a full-throated singer whose melodies are odes to farms and water and livestock and fishing rods and rifles, and to hardworking folks who know the value of life as well as the randomness of life’s troubles.”  Her fans will welcome this new story that as author Daniel Woodrell (Winter’s Bone) said, “tells a story so deeply rooted in a specific place that the accumulation of details approaches the magical.”

From the Publisher

“A master of rural noir returns with a fierce, mesmerizing novel about exceptional women and the soul of a small town.

“On an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp―an area known as “The Waters” to the residents of nearby Whiteheart, Michigan―herbalist and eccentric Hermine “Herself” Zook has healed the local women of their ailments for generations. As stubborn as her tonics are powerful, Herself inspires reverence and fear in the people of Whiteheart, and even in her own three estranged daughters. The youngest―the beautiful, inscrutable, and lazy Rose Thorn―has left her own daughter, eleven-year-old Dorothy “Donkey” Zook, to grow up wild.

Campbell

“Donkey spends her days searching for truths in the lush landscape and in her math books, waiting for her wayward mother and longing for a father, unaware that family secrets, passionate love, and violent men will flood through the swamp and upend her idyllic childhood. Rage simmers below the surface of this divided community, and those on both sides of the divide have closed their doors against the enemy. The only bridge across the waters is Rose Thorn.

“With a ‘ruthless and precise eye for the details of the physical world’ (Jane Smiley, New York Times Book Review), Bonnie Jo Campbell presents an elegant antidote to the dark side of masculinity, celebrating the resilience of nature and the brutality and sweetness of rural life.”

Kirkus Reviews

“The wise woman privy to nature’s secrets has become an overused fictional trope, but it’s mitigated here by Campbell’s sharply drawn characters and her refusal to make easy judgments about them. A birth rather predictably reconciles the town’s men with the Zook women, but the new arrival does not solve everyone’s problems. Campbell’s thoughtfully rendered characters find life rewarding and bewildering in equal measure. Atmospheric, well-written, and generally satisfying despite some overly familiar elements.”

–Malcolm

‘A Naturalist and Other Beasts: Tales from a Life in the Field’ by George B. Schaller

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books
Schaller in 2005

George Beals Schaller (born 26 May 1933) is an American mammalogist, biologist, conservationist and author. Schaller is recognized by many as the world’s preeminent field biologist, studying wildlife throughout Africa, Asia and South America. Born in Berlin, Schaller grew up in Germany, but moved to Missouri as a teen. He is vice president of Panthera Corporation and serves as chairman of their Cat Advisory Council. Schaller is also a senior conservationist at the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society.” -Wikipedia

I became aware of George Schaller in 1978 when Peter Matthiessen accompanied him on a two-month trek of the Tiberian Plateau that resulted in the book The Snow Leopard. (1978). Subsequently, I read Schaller’s Stones of Silence (1980) about the same region from a naturalist’s point of view. I’ve been a fan ever since.

From the Publisher

“Since the 1950s, eminent field biologist George Schaller has roamed through many lands observing wild animals and conducting landmark long-term studies that have deepened our understanding of these creatures. He has reported and reflected on his work in classic, much-acclaimed books, including The Last Panda and National Book Award winner The Serengeti Lion, but much of his best writing has been ephemeral, published in magazines, only to drop out of sight.

“This collection features 19 short pieces brought together in book form to offer a unique overview of his life in the field.

“Chapters describe stalking tigers in India and jaguars in Brazil’s Pantanal swamps, studying mountain gorillas in Central Africa and predator-prey relations in the Serengeti, tracking newfound species on the wild border of Vietnam and Laos, searching for snow leopards in the Hindu Kush, and Schaller’s groundbreaking work with giant pandas in Sichuan. Later accounts broaden the focus from individual creatures to whole ecosystems. 

“‘The careless rapture of my early studies has been replaced more and more by efforts to protect animals and their habitats,’ he writes.

“New to this book are Schaller’s introductions for each chapter, which add and update information, and an overall introduction that looks back on his remarkable career.”

From Orion Magazine’s Review

“’At least once in a lifetime,’ Schaller admonishes us, ‘everyone should make a pilgrimage into the wilderness to dwell on its wonders and discover the idyll of a past now largely gone.’ This book is a medley of such soul-nourishing forays, nineteen short essays previously published in various periodicals and books over the past half-century, each updated with a fact-filled introduction.

“The charm of this book is Schaller’s unabashed love of his subjects and his lyrical way of describing them; ‘knowing such animals individually,’ he writes, ‘one begins to view an area with a new intimacy and with a caring that turns into a special enchantment.’ Schaller seeks ‘a deeper understanding, one beyond soulless statistics.’ In the hands of anybody else, declarations like these might be taken as anthropomorphic. But Schaller’s credentials as a tough-as-nails scientist are impeccable, and his enthusiasm for getting down and dirty with his subjects, combined with his literary skill, forge some of the best nature writing of our time.”

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of magical realism novels set in the Florida Panhandle of the 1950s.

‘Prophet Song’ by Paul Lynch

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, writing1 Comment

‘From that first knock at the door, Prophet Song forces us out of our complacency as we follow the terrifying plight of a woman seeking to protect her family in an Ireland descending into totalitarianism. We felt unsettled from the start, submerged in – and haunted by – the sustained claustrophobia of Lynch’s powerfully constructed world. He flinches from nothing, depicting the reality of state violence and displacement and offering no easy consolations. Here the sentence is stretched to its limits – Lynch pulls off feats of language that are stunning to witness. He has the heart of a poet, using repetition and recurring motifs to create a visceral reading experience. This is a triumph of emotional storytelling, bracing and brave. With great vividness, Prophet Song captures the social and political anxieties of our current moment. Readers will find it soul-shattering and true, and will not soon forget its warnings.’  – Esi Edugyan, Chair, Booker Prize.

When Kirkus Reviews praises a book by saying, “An exceptionally gifted writer, Lynch brings a compelling lyricism to her fears and despair while he marshals the details marking the collapse of democracy and the norms of daily life. His tonal control, psychological acuity, empathy, and bleakness recall Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). And Eilish, his strong, resourceful, complete heroine, recalls the title character of Lynch’s excellent Irish-famine novel, Grace (2017)” it’s certainly worth a look. Those of us who remember “The Troubles” (1960s-1990s)  will feel an eerie sense of Deja Vu to the violent world of the Irish Republican Army.

From the Publisher

“On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police on her step. They have arrived to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

“Ireland is falling apart, caught in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny. As the life she knows and the ones she loves disappear before her eyes, Eilish must contend with the dystopian logic of her new, unraveling country. How far will she go to save her family? And what—or who—is she willing to leave behind?

“The winner of the Booker Prize 2023, Prophet Song presents a terrifying and shocking vision of a country sliding into authoritarianism and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.”

From the Guardian

“Lynch’s message is crystal clear: lives the world over are experiencing upheaval, violence, persecution. Prophet Song is a literary manifesto for empathy for those in need and a brilliant, haunting novel that should be placed into the hands of policymakers everywhere.”

Reviewers in general are calling the book believable and plausible as well as a stunning achievement.

—Malcolm

 

Remembering ‘The Summer of ’42’ by Herman Raucher

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, writing

This bitter-sweet movie written by Herman Raucher based on his memoir scored big at the box office when it appeared in 1971 and became quite a sensation with young men who wished the film had been about them: teenager meets a grieving war widow and they end up in bed.

Some critics like Roger Ebert didn’t like the sentimentality. According to Wikipedia, “Vincent Canby of The New York Times expressed that Hermie’s encounter with Dorothy is ‘a good deal more common in novels and screenplays (and in the Hermie-like fantasies of middle-aged writers) than in real life’, but praised the film’s ‘reticent quality of its romanticism’ and its actors. Canby concluded the ‘foreground is mostly accurate, in which sexual panic and fist fights and nose bleeds are treated with the great comic respect they deserve.'” The tone of the movie was greatly enhanced by Michel Legrand’s score which won an Oscar.

I read the book, saw the movie, and liked both. I liked them because the story was well told and because–as Vincent Canby noted–meeting “Dorothy” was a prospective rite of passage that seldom happened, and ended badly if it did happen, though these realities didn’t stop numerous young men from dreaming and fantasizing about such an encounter. Freudian psychiatrists probably have a lot to say about such fantasies.

From the Book Publisher

“A chronicle of one summer in a boy’s coming of age”—the international bestselling classic that became the basis for the Oscar-winning film (Medium).

“Captivating and evocative, Herman Raucher’s semi-autobiographical tale has been made into a record-breaking Academy Award-winning hit movie, adapted for the stage, and enchanted readers for generations.

“In the summer of 1942, Hermie is fifteen. He is wildly obsessed with sex, and passionately in love with an “older woman” of twenty-two, whose husband is overseas and at war. Ambling through Nantucket Island with his friends, Hermie’s indelible narration chronicles his frantic efforts to become a man, especially one worthy of the lovely Dorothy, as well as his glorious and heartbreaking initiation into sex.”

from the Reviewers

Website photo

“Mr. Raucher scores most tellingly. His recall of nervous teen-age gaucheries is dead accurate, hilarious, tinged with sadness.”—The New York Times Book Review

“A charming and tender novel . . . The overall effect is one of high hilarity. Raucher is a comic-artist who is able to convey the fears and joys . . . of the boy and at the same time give older readers a wrench in the heart. ”—Publishers Weekly

—Malcolm

It’s time to re-read Pat Conroy’s ‘Prince of Tides’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, writing

Along with Gibbon’s A Scots Quair and Allende’s The House of Spirits, Pat Conroy’s  The Prince of Tides (1986) is one of those “comfort food” books that I return to again and again even though it tells the story of a doomed family with some the worst personal events ever consigned to print.  Most readers, I think, need “comfort food” books not for the comfort they provide but for familiar stories, beautifully told.

I suppose most readers are more familiar with The Great Santini and The Lords of Discipline, in part because their stories are more straightforward and the movies were better made. I like all of Conroy’s work but come back to The Prince of Tides because the story is a poem to the South Carolina low country and the flaws of a Southern upbringing of the era in which the book was set.

I grew up in the South along the Florida coast, and I am familiar with the beauty of marshland, tides, fishing, coastal waters, and what Southern society “did wrong,” so I know the tropes typically found in Southern fiction set in the 1950s and 1960s. When I read The Prince of Tides, I see where I came from without the worst of times that confront the Wingo family.

Conroy in 1986

The San Francisco Chronicle wrote, “A big, sprawling saga of a novel this epic family drama is a masterwork by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Great Santini.” Some reviewers would say the book is overwritten and/or that most of Conroy’s work is overwritten. Perhaps so, but I don’t care because the settings and circumstances almost demand that his novels should be overwritten.

From the Publisher

“Set in New York City and the low country of South Carolina, The Prince of Tides opens when Tom, a high school football coach whose marriage and career are crumbling, flies from South Carolina to New York after learning of his twin sister’s suicide attempt. Savannah is one of the most gifted poets of her generation, and both the cadenced beauty of her art and the jumbled cries of her illness are clues to the too-long-hidden story of her wounded family. In the paneled offices and luxurious restaurants of New York City, Tom and Susan Lowenstein, Savannah’s psychiatrist, unravel a history of violence, abandonment, commitment, and love. And Tom realizes that trying to save his sister is perhaps his last chance to save himself.

“With passion and a rare gift of language, Pat Conroy moves from present to past, tracing the amazing history of the Wingos from World War II through the final days of the war in Vietnam and into the 1980s, drawing a rich range of characters: the lovable, crazy Mr. Fruit, who for decades has wordlessly directed traffic at the same intersection in the southern town of Colleton; Reese Newbury, the ruthless, patrician land speculator who threatens the Wingos’ only secure worldly possession, Melrose Island; Herbert Woodruff, Susan Lowenstein’s husband, a world-famous violinist; Tolitha Wingo, Savannah’s mentor and eccentric grandmother, the first real feminist in the Wingo family.

“Pat Conroy reveals the lives of his characters with surpassing depth and power, capturing the vanishing beauty of the South Carolina low country and a lost way of life.”

According to Publishers Weekly, the book is, “A seductive narrative, told with bravado, flourishes, portentous foreshadowing, sardonic humor and eloquent turns of phrase. … For sheer storytelling finesse, Conroy will have few rivals.” 

As I re-read this familiar novel, I am sick with an infection of unknown origin that I contracted in June and that still has doctors perplexed. Plenty of tests, but no answers. The story fits my mood as I wonder whether or not at my age I can survive this illness. This is why we need comfort books. They help us remain sane because they present greater insanities than we can endure.

–Malcolm

Scheherazade

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, writing

Scheherazade, the teller of the tales in The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, captured my imagination when I was in junior high school.  The stories are fascinating. So was the idea of the narrator telling one story per night–but never quite ending it–to keep the king from killing her when a tale ends which he had threatened to do. Or perhaps it was her name that drew me in and never let me go.

My parents are at fault because they gave me a copy of the book as a gift for Christmas or my birthday. It’s around here somewhere. Suffice it to say, it wasn’t the definitive 1880s translation from Richard Burton  (1821–1890) which filled many volumes and might still be the only complete English translation.

I also had a copy of Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1888 symphonic suite “Scheherazade” based on the story. I had it on vinyl. It’s also around here somewhere, though I probably wore all the grooves off. My copy is older than the version shown here.

I still like the stories now, many years after I first read them, and wonder how many high school and college students study the book anymore. I hope they do, for though it comes from another time, place, and culture, it presents stories that demand our attention and that keeps us reading–rather like the king who fell in love with Sheherazade (sparing her life) while she was telling her stories every night.

from the Publisher (current edition)

“THE BOOK OF THE Thousand Nights and a Night VOLUME V Translated by RICHARD F. BURTON Limited to one thousand numbered sets 1885 (London “Burton Club” edition), illustrated The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (1885), subtitled “A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments”, is a celebrated English language translation of “One Thousand and One Nights” (the “Arabian Nights”) – a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age (8th−13th centuries) – by the British explorer and Arabist Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890). It stood as the only complete translation of the Macnaghten or Calcutta II edition (Egyptian recension) of the “Arabian Nights” until 2008. “One Thousand and One Nights” (Arabic: كِتَاب أَلْف لَيْلَة وَلَيْلَة‎‎ kitāb ʾalf layla wa-layla) is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first English language edition (1706), which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment. The work was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across West, Central, and South Asia and North Africa. The tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Mesopotamian, Indian, Jewish and Egyptian folklore and literature. In particular, many tales were originally folk stories from the Caliphate era, while others, especially the frame story, are most probably drawn from the Pahlavi Persian work Hazār Afsān (Persian: هزار افسان‎‎, lit. A Thousand Tales) which in turn relied partly on Indian elements. Initial frame story of the ruler Shahryār (from Persian: شهريار‎‎, meaning “king” or “sovereign”) and his wife Scheherazade, (from Persian: شهرزاد‎‎, possibly meaning “of noble lineage”), and the framing device incorporated throughout the tales themselves. The stories proceed from this original tale; some are framed within other tales, while others begin and end of their own accord. The bulk of the text is in prose, although verse is occasionally used for songs and riddles and to express heightened emotion. Most of the poems are single couplets or quatrains, although some are longer.”

These stories took me to another world as did the music. Take a look and you might have a similar experience though not with my obsession. I do believe these stories are “must-reading” because they are a strong component of the world’s literary heritage–as are the Shakespeare plays–and demand our attention. That is to say, part of being a multi-genre, multi-cultural, reader is to dip one’s toe (if not more) into the stories spun by Scheherazade and know more of the world outside our neighborhoods.

–Malcolm

‘Flowers for Algernon’ by Daniel Keyes

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books

“Flowers for Algernon is a short story by American author Daniel Keyes, later expanded by him into a novel and subsequently adapted for film and other media. The short story, written in 1958 and first published in the April 1959 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1960. The novel was published in 1966 and was joint winner of that year’s Nebula Award for Best Novel (with Babel-17).” – Wikipedia

The name of the Algernon character, a mouse, was inspired by the name of the English poet  Algernon Charles Swinburne. The story focuses on the ethical considerations that come out of the treatment of the mentally disabled and is drawn from events from the author’s life.

My generation studied this novel in school, but by now–with all the movies available online and via satellite TV–I suppose more people have seen the 1968 movie film “Charlie” for which Cliff Robertson won the Best Actor Oscar and for which Stirling Silliphant won the Best Screenplay Oscar.

Wikipedia notes that “Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four, writing ‘The relationship between Charly (Cliff Robertson) and the girl (Claire Bloom) is handled delicately and well. She cares for him but inadequately understands the problems he’s facing. These become more serious when he passes normal IQ and moves into the genius category; his emotional development falls behind. It is this story, involving a personal crisis, which makes Charly a warm and rewarding film.'”

The American Library Association includes the novel on the list of those most frequently challenged between 1990 and 1999 because of portions that describe Charlie trying to cope with his sexual desires.

From the Publisher of the 2005 Edition

With more than five million copies sold, Flowers for Algernon is the beloved, classic story of a mentally disabled man whose experimental quest for intelligence mirrors that of Algernon, an extraordinary lab mouse. In poignant diary entries, Charlie tells how a brain operation increases his IQ and changes his life. As the experimental procedure takes effect, Charlie’s intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment seems to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance–until Algernon begins his sudden, unexpected deterioration. Will the same happen to Charlie?

From Kirkus Reviews

“For lovers of Science Fiction, this story, in its original short story form was always a special kind of tour de force, a classic to be given to people you were trying to convert to the genre. Now, and regretfully, unfortunately, it has been turned into a full novel which in turn is being made into a motion picture. The idea is still unique. It’s still Charlie Gordon’s journal starting from “”progris riport 1 martch 3″”…””Dr. Strauss says I should rite down what I think and remembir and every thing that happens to me from now on.”” And it’s still the tormented story of a human being with a low intellect, who has a passion for learning and who is used as a guinea pig in an experiment designed to triple the I.Q. It is still the story of the adjustment of a man who swings from one end of the intelligence scale to the far other. But now, oh what Freudian psychoses riddle the pages of the Progress Reports. What shapely Hollywooden scenes come to view. What bastardization of what was once so beautifully put. The beginning and end seem relatively untouched and remain striking in their simplicity (the end is a real tear jerker). The middle section is saved only by the relatively few scenes with Algernon, the guinea pig mouse Charlie used to race with.”

I agree. The story began so well. And then things happened that seemed to dilute it because it lacked what it had as a short story: truth and a pure focus. I take issue with the fact that the experiment was even considered, much less done. And that, I think, is the real message of the book: do you do this or do you not do this?

–Malcolm