Doctor Olaf Van Schuler's Brain

By Kirsten Menger-Anderson

Book Overview

"A thriller that spans five centuries, Doctor Olaf Van Schuler's Brain is entertaining and thought provoking. . . This book is eerie, smart, unique, and very delicately crafted, telling many stories in every layer of time. . . Truly a pleasure to read."--Feminist Review

In 1664 Dr. Olaf van Schuler flees the Old World and arrives in New Amsterdam with his lunatic mother, two bags of medical implements, and a carefully guarded book of his own medicines. He is the first in what will become a long line of peculiar physicians. Plagued by madness and guided by an intense desire to cure human affliction, each generation of this unusual family is driven by the science of its day: spontaneous combustion, phrenology, animal magnetism, electrical shock treatment, psychosurgery, genetic research. As they make their way in the world, New York City, too, evolves--from the dark and rough days of the seventeenth century to the towering, frenetic metropolis of today.

Like Patrick S skind's classic novel Perfume, Kirsten Menger-Anderson's debut is a literary cabinet of curiosities--fascinating and unsettling, rich and utterly singular.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565125614
• ISBN13: 9781565125612
• Release Date: October 2008
• Publisher: Algonquin Books
• Length: 290 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.3" x 7.2"

Customer Reviews

Good but not great.

I was expecting the author to write more on the family history and have heavy medical terminology. The short stories that she wrote about the family through the ages were sometimes told from the clients point of view instead of the family. Sometimes it was hard to pieced together who from the family was who through other peoples point of view.

Elegant, Thought-provoking Tales of Misguided Faith

This beautifully written novel-in-stories follows the lives of twelve generations of New York City physicians who are trying to better the human condition, each in his or her own misguided way. I have to say Dr. Olaf van Schuler's Brain is the most profoundly satisfying book I've read in a very long time. Kirsten Menger-Anderson has a real gift for choosing the perfect resonant detail, creating prose that is both evocative...

A Short Story Collection in the Realm of the Highly Spectacular

Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain is a collection of short stories or vignettes, tracing the family of van Schuler, generation after generation, each crazy in their own way. Starting with Dr. Olaf, fleeing Europe to the city of New Amsterdam in 1664, with his lunatic mother, his medical tools and a book of medicines he developed himself, each chapter explores the changes in New York City and medical science through the often...

Cure du Jour

Kirstn Menger-Anderson leads us on a mesmerizing romp via something Mary Shelly would have been proud of. In Doctor Olaf Van Schuler's Brain, we are led down a path of medical quakery, or not, depending on the times - in a series of eerie vignettes designed to highlight a cure of the time while tracing a long line of a family of doctors. In the beginning we are led by candle light to envision the soul found deep inside the...

If Edward Gorey illustrated Edgar Allen Poe...

The cover art caught my attention, and i was not disappointed - I absolutely loved this book. Dark, stormy, historically accurate, and a completely intoxicating read. Each short vingette melts into the next, illustrating the history of crackpot medicine while simultaneously outlining a family rife with madness and complex interpersonal relationships. Particularly for a first book, I was completely blown away. The author...