About the book, from the publisher: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.Read an excerpt from Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain, and learn more about the author and her work at Kirsten Menger-Anderson's website and the "Regarding Dr. Olaf" blog.
Like Patrick Süskind's classic novel Perfume, Kirsten Menger-Anderson's debut is a literary cabinet of curiosities—fascinating and unsettling, rich and utterly singular.
Kirsten Menger-Anderson's short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in the Southwest Review, Ploughshares, Maryland Review, Post Road, and Wascana Review, Pindeldyboz, among other publications. Her work has been short listed for the Richard Yates Award, the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers, the Iowa Review Story Contest, and the Andre Dubus Award.
The Page 69 Test: Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
