Science is an elixir that sweeps characters under its spell. Yet the pace of [DOCTOR OLAF VAN SCHULER’S BRAIN] is driven as much, if not more, by the reader’s romantic appetite—by an itch to discover how each story is romantically resolved and connected to the long lineage.
Menger-Anderson has not only done her research -- deftly documenting three centuries of medical quackery -- but she also knows how to weave a tale. She holds the reader spellbound from the first slice into a corpse's brain to the final probe of genetic research.
In the fertile imagination of Kirsten Menger-Anderson, one after another of the descendants in the Steenwycks clan confront the medical miseries and mysteries of their day: animal magnetism, spontaneous combustion, neurasthenia, then the more modern maladies of polio, the side effects of breast implants and finally Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease: mad cow... Readers will find Menger-Anderson's presentation of the case fascinating, but only rarely can the physicians heal themselves.
An ingenious and appealing collection of linked stories. . . . Menger-Anderson brings a writerly order to the messiness of our minds.
Within a highly atmospheric framework the ghosts of Robert Louis Stevenson, Washington Irving and Mark Twain haunt the stories, Menger-Anderson delicately angles toward a cautionary tale for the modern world
A fascinating kaleidoscope ride across generations of physicians and their patients. The writing is vivid and entertaining, revealing lifetimes and worldviews in a few carefully chosen details. . . . The author's zest for the historical details shines throughout the collection.. . . . In this quirky, moving collection, Menger-Anderson illustrates the power of medicine - and family.
"An array of arresting, thoughtful, and touching moments."
Kirsten Menger-Anderson's strikingly original "Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain" explores so many fascinating topics -- among them, animal magnetism, phrenology and spontaneous combustion -- that it might be best to begin with what it is not.
Although it follows several generations of a single family from 1664 to 2006, Menger-Anderson's book is not a doorstop-sized epic. It leaps across the centuries in a mere 290 pages.
