I am an avid reader, but not a nitpicky one. The most important thing in a book(and often the only one) is a good story, told well! Given that books can be judged on sooo many criteria, I decided to review 2 books, which fulfil the one I just mentioned simple yet totally off-beat stories, told wonderfully well.
One of them(Flowers for Algernon) has achieved great acclaim all over the world, and has seen numerous adaptations, television serials, and what not. The other(Gerald’s Game) is a much’lesser’ book by conventional standards, but has a story no less gripping.
So here goes:’Flowers for Algernon’ - Daniel Keyes
The Story: Charlie Gordon -gentle, amiable, oddly engaging Charlie Gordon- had lived in a kind of mental twilight all his life. He knew knowledge was important and had learned to read and write, but also knew he wasn’t nearly as bright as most of the people around him. He worked in a bakery, and had a few’friends’. They allowed Charlie to eat with them and play with them, sometimes they laughed with him. Charlie wondered sometimes if they were laughing’at’ him or’with’ him, but always concluded them to be his friends, who would never ridicule him.
Charlie got spotted by a nearby lab, one where a revolutionary scientific experiment was underway, which would greatly multiply Charlie’s intelligence, and make him normal! Charlie became a part of this experiment. There was even a white mouse named Algernon who outpaced Charlie in some ways, and was part of the same. But the remarkable operation had been performed on Algernon, and now he was a genius among mice. What would happen if Charlie underwent a similar operation.
What unfolds, people, is a remarkable story where Charlie gradually becomes smarter.smarter than Algernon, then smarter than his friends, finally smarter than the scientists themselves. He takes over the experiment, and predicts.what?! I am not going to spoil it all for you.
Interwoven with superb sub plots(Charlie’s girlfriend, his biological parents, his’friends’, all play a role), this is an extraordinary tale that any storyteller would be privileged to tell.
The way it is told - One of the most innovative narratives ever. The story unfolds through exerpts from Charlie’s diary. The gradual changes, some subtle(spellings, grammar, his view of the world), and some less so(his realising what people really think of him) have been captured brilliantly. Adopting the narrative style only when absolutely necessary, Daniel Keyes has given us what I certainly consider one of the most beautiful stories ever written. Kudos!
’Gerald’s Game’ - Stephen King
The Story, the story- What an amazing one, too. Gerald is a succesful executive, with one vice.he likes playing kinky games with his wife. They set off for a vacation in paradise.renting an entire island off the coast of somewhere, to be left undisturbed for an entire week! They can hardly believe the paradise that greets them as they land.and let the ship that brought them there sail away into the sunset.alone, for seven days! What better, then, to play one of Gerald’s games! He cuffs his wife to the bed, hands and legs, strips her naked.and proceeds to do so himself. Just before he leaps upon her to ravage her, though, he slips into the bathroom.and she hears a dull thud.
As she strains to see the bathroom door, she spots a slowly expanding pool of blood. Gerald is dead, having slipped and cracked his skull on the bath tub. What follows, people is 300 odd pages of sheer terror. Terror, that Gerald’s wife lives through. Handcuffed, naked, unable to move beyond the bed, no one to come to the island for seven days, with the body of her dead(or dying?) husband lying at her feet. Highly recommended from me!
The way it is told - Not different in style from other Stephen King books, really. Verbose, correct, detailed. So there they are.the 2 most offbeat stories I know of.if you know of any more, do comment on this, or M2M me! And temme what you think of the review! Cheers