Doctor Olaf Van Schuler’s Brain
Doctor Olaf Van Schuler’s Brain
by Kirsten Menger-Anderson
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.
Long Island is famous for its wonderful beaches so when Beth and her friends wanted to go to our town beach (right next door to Jones Beach) how could I say no to her request for me to pick her up. Of course, this was the 4th of July and she wanted to stay for the big fireworks show so I expected some traffic. What I didn’t expect was what I encountered. 
By the time I got to the town beach, the gate was closed so the girls had to walk out to meet me. Then it was time for the trip back. It took about 45 minutes to get back to the water tower and onto Wantagh Parkway and then another 45 minutes to get back home because there was an accident near Merrick Road and everyone had to slow down to look. But I will admit that the ride home seemed much shorter and was a lot more fun than the ride to the beach. A 90 minute drive with six silly (but very bright) teenage girls is a lot more entertaining than a 90 minute ride by yourself. As my buddy Jeff said on Facebook, this is a memory that I will treasure. 
