If you could figure out how to live with family then you'd gone a long way toward finding your peace.

The strange, wonderful stories of Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain introduce us to the tremendously gifted Kirsten Menger-Anderson, a writer whose subject is nothing less than the diagnosis and cure of the human malady. We follow twelve generations of New York City's Steenwycks family through their forays into phrenology, mesmerism, radium therapy and similar misadventures, a historically rich narrative that Menger-Anderson delivers in striking, elegant prose and with a sure eye for detail. This is a remarkable debut by a writer to watch.

If you could figure out how to live with family then you'd gone a long way toward finding your peace.

By the end of the first decade of writing, I considered myself a confirmed failure in the eyes of the world.

Late bloomer' is another way of saying 'slow learner.

It took me 10 years to write a story that pleased me - that I could look at after it was published and not cringe.

I really had to decide why I was writing. I had no interest in going back to law; I very briefly - for about six hours - considered going to get my MBA, but in the end, I realized that the only work I really wanted to do was write.