I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone

Flowers for Algernon (1959) by Daniel Keyes.
”I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.”
it is a work filled with pain, the desire to please and the bitterness of disappointment.
the main character of the book, Charlie, works as a cleaner in a bakery and goes to a school for mentally retarded. he is naive and good-natured. but the family renounced him, because he has an extremely low IQ. scientists offer him to participate in an experiment to perform a brain operation and Charlie agrees – he is sure that if he gets smarter, people will love him …
he so wants to be smart, so strives for it, just to realize that the world isn't so beautiful. people, whom he considers friends, turns away from him. he loses his job, can't find love, but he get many, many problems, on the solution of which he is forced to work tirelessly – for the benefit of humanity and his future. does he feel happy? hardly.
the novel is written in the form of a diary that the main character fills from the beginning to the end of the experiment. it is full of grammatical mistakes at the beginning and at the end, which may make it difficult for some to read. but it is precisely through these mistakes that we see the hero develop and reach his highest point and return to his starting point.
317 pages soaked in my tears.
I've been reduced to heartfelt by no more numbers of books in my life and I will unashamedly admit that Flowers for Algernon is one of them. few books can replicate that lingering feeling you receive after reading: the kind that stays with you a few days after you’ve finished it. Flowers for Algernon was without a doubt one of those – the supreme angels of book-kind – and I can’t begin to say how much of an effect this book can have on you. It will make you reflect on your own life, shed buckets, and completely and utterly break your heart.