Customer Reviews

Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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 can truly turn a phrase that is both slight and deep.

I usually don't pick up a collection of short stories, so needless to say when I opened the book and began to read, I was in for a nice surprise. Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain is a wonderfully wild and vivid tale that keeps us teetering on the edge of sanity and the sheer madness of the insane. It's grotesque and frightful yet charming and witty. The book is for some, and not for others. For me, it was a great read.

This was an unexpectedly good read; at first I wasn't sure if the novel was too quirky. But the author's writing is beautiful and eloquent; she chooses her words wisely, making the sentences short with bold detail. The premise of the novel is interesting: generations of a Dutch family make a lasting impact on medicine. Overall, a great read.

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 brain inspired by mutilations of creatures in view of clandestine medical studies.

We end up in the more modern day of breast implants, but what lies between is pure astonishment. Each story brings to light the medical treatment for hysteria, craziness, lack of energy, personality testing, and many other maladies.

What is also intriguing and wonderful about this work is the atmosphere it portrays in each story. It carries us through history and historical happenings as they pertain to certain illness and complaints.

The author has done an amazing job at tracing this family of doctors through the decades while generating the feeling and mania involving some of the cures and causes of the disease and problems of each story.

This book will definitely make you think. You may also try to come up with other things that have been used throughout time in the name of modern medicine.

I thoroughly enjoyed this cozy, dark little book and recommend it.

What a fascinating collection! Menger-Anderson takes readers through a vivid journey of medical history that begins in 1664 when Dr. Olaf van Schuler flees the Old World and arrives in New Amsterdam with his lunatic mother. The vignettes that follow continue through to the present day and introduce readers to subsequent generations of this eccentric family. As a student of psychology, I was familiar with many of the practices explored in this book, including phrenology, animal magnetism, electrical shock treatment, and psychosurgery. What this collection of stories does is place these procedures in the context of the human experience in a way that only good storytelling can. Menger-Anderson's smooth prose and understated tone allows the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. With her expertly rendered stories, Menger-Anderson has succeeded in giving the evolution of medical treatment a human face. Although I read many really good books, I don't find too many original ones. Dr. Olaf van Schuler's Brain is both a really good read and an original one. Don't miss it!

Kirsten Menger-Anderson's novel combines medical history, family relations, and a changing urban context in New York City from the 17th century to the present. The impetus to heal shared by 13 generations of doctors encounters the limits of science and the imperfections of people. Menger-Anderson's story-telling is understated, engaging, non-judgmental, and opens the space between desire and effect. Accessible and multi-layered, her novel will appeal to many types of readers and interests.

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 and elegantly spare. Racism, feminism, poverty, the pain of the immigrant experience--each story illuminates the experience of the struggling outsider in a fresh, thought-provoking fashion. What happens in the silences and shifts between the stories is as intriguing as the narratives themselves. Most impressive of all was the way the disparate voices "slur" together in the brilliant conclusion.

Rich in historical information, the book offers a light-handed education in medical history as well as an insight into the mixture of arrogance, delusion and faith that still lurks at the heart of medical science today. One chilling refrain is that the doctors, no matter how dangerous their quackery, are always held in the highest popular esteem. "Popular opinion never strayed too far from the truth," muses one character when she reads about the miracle of lobotomies in the New York Times--words of self-comfort as dangerous today as they were fifty years ago.

As mesmerizing as a faith healer, this book grabbed me from the first paragraph and never let go. Highly recommended for readers who enjoy intelligent fiction that offers more questions than answers.

As many people have stated-this book is not for everyone. It is a panoramic voyage on many levels. It is a fascinating collection of human history and behavior-a great study for the psychologist or any student of human behavior


This is a collection of vignettes that begins in 1664. Our protagonist, Dr. Olaf Van Schuler, left Europe and arrived in America (New Amsterdam) with his medical knowledge, implements, and medications. He is accompanied by his Mother, a woman who is seemingly 'normal' at first glance, but clearly eccentric and bizarre to the point of mild insanity.

The book chronicles the generations of this unusual, quirky family that come after the Good Doctor. It describes each "interesting" descendant against the backdrop of the New York City of the day.

This is an intellectual journey, a study of human behavior in its many expressions, and a fascinating read.

But, not for everyone. An intellectual curiosity is highly recommended.

Let me get one thing out of the way: this book is not for everyone. I could fill a seven page review explaining what this book is not. What it is part fable, part fairy-tale, and part experiment that rewards the reader who enjoys a walk on the literary odd side.

Because this book is so singular and so short, it's difficult to explain it without giving away too much. Menger-Anderson tells the story of New York and humanity's evolving relationship with medicine through the story of one family across multiple generations. All in 290 pages. If your tolerance for overly self-conscious literary efforts is limited rest assured that this book is neither inaccessible or annoyingly precious. Menger-Anderson uses straightforward language to capture arresting and unusual images.

The reviews likening this book to Suskind's Perfume are spot on. Both books seek to create a world we recognize with a tiny but all important warp in the fabric. While Suskind invites us to rethink the importance of scent, Menger-Anderson lets us experience the evolving mystery and miraculous promises of medicine. Dr Olaf is probably best read in one sitting - it's certainly short enough - where the spell Menger-Anderson casts can remain unbroken.

Doctor van Schuler's Brain is a very strange and interesting collection of related short stories that follow a family of on-the-fringe physicians, beginning with van Schuler himself in 1664. The thirteen chapters cover three and a half centuries of a family of doctors, eleven generations touched with mental instability, obsessed with the human brain and with odd things like spontaneous human combustion. Not only do we see the development of a completely strange but brilliant family, but also the evolution of the practice of medicine and psychology.

We are treated to in-depth studies of animal magnetism, phrenology, electric shock therapy, and lobotomy as we follow each generation of physician who tries to cure the people around them but who are limited by lack of medical knowledge along with questionable decision making processes. The ambition of the van Schuler/Steenwyckes family is always to cure the madness that appears in every generation, starting with Olaf's mother, and hopefully at the same time to relieve the suffering of society.

Written against the backdrop of major historical events such as the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Attica Uprising, and the Great Depression, the stories focus both on the limitations of medicine but also on how change is pushed forward by personal emotional need. Quirky, sometimes disturbing, and often disjointed, Doctor van Schuler's Brain is still worth reading for the well researched history of the U.S., New York City, and medicine. But most importantly, it's worth reading for what it teaches us about the humanity of the person behind the white coat and stethescope.