Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain by Kirsten Menger-Anderson

I just finished this book and have to say I'm charmed. Essentially a series of vignettes that center around several generations of one family, each story is perfectly capable of standing alone. Each generation of the Steenwycks family contains at least one doctor- always on the cutting edge of medicine, often a little bit insane. I liked that some of the stories didn't actually focus on the doctors as much as on the people they treated, and loved that the city of New York itself was such an important character throughout the book.

I can understand how the structure could be off-putting to some readers, but I found that it worked well, and allowed for a more nuanced presentation of the Steenwycks family than I think would have been possible using the more typical novel construction.

4 comments:

Donna said...

Hi - I enjoyed reading your review of "Doctor Olaf". I too read it (I received it as an ARC through LibraryThing) though I was disappointed with the end a bit. But I do agree with you that it was a very interesting (and different) book!

Anonymous said...

Sounds interesting. Thanks for the review.

Ania said...

Thanks for the review - sounds interesting! I like books with a psychological angle. Another good one is "Human Traces" by Sebastian Faulks.

jenclair said...

I like the sound of this one!