Doctor Olaf Van Schuler's Brain
Doctor Olaf Van Schuler’s Brain
by Kirsten Menger-Anderson
1.5 Stars

This book is a collection of short stories with the vague link of occurring in separate generations of one family. The author tries to show a history of quack medicine through the eyes of one family but really the link to the single family is vague at best and does nothing to make the stories better or make them more interesting. Each chapter is a separate story that has little or no relation to the prior story so they either stand alone or not. For the most part they do not.

The first story is a perfect example of poor writing. The main character is a doctor doing research to help his mother who has a mental illness. But the author gives the doctor some kind of seizure disorder in which he rapes and murders people when he has seizures. Contrary to the author’s beliefs People with seizure disorders are not dangerous killers. The second story has to do with a doctor (the son of the doctor in the prior story) who believes in spontaneous combustion fighting to help a man who murdered his wife. This could have been an interesting story but in the hands of this author it goes nowhere. The third story is about a developmentally disabled adult who is treated by the son of the doctor in chapter two. In this story, the author seems to be under the impression that the developmentally disabled are dangerous and will potentially attack any woman they are attracted to. And so on.

Overall, I found the stories poorly written and less than interesting. The characters were flat and unbelievable. The endings felt like a page limit had been reached more than the story had reached its logical conclusion. I would recommend that you don’t waste your time with this book.

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