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    Andrew's Brain: A Novel
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    Andrew's Brain: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Andrew's Brain: A Novel
    Audiobook3 hours

    Andrew's Brain: A Novel

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    3/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    This brilliant novel by an American master, the author of Ragtime, The Book of Daniel, Billy Bathgate, and The March, takes us on a radical trip into the mind of a man who, more than once in his life, has been the inadvertent agent of disaster.

    NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, SLATE, AND THE TELEGRAPH

    Speaking from an unknown place and to an unknown interlocutor, Andrew is thinking, Andrew is talking, Andrew is telling the story of his life, his loves, and the tragedies that have led him to this place and point in time. And as he confesses, peeling back the layers of his strange story, we are led to question what we know about truth and memory, brain and mind, personality and fate, about one another and ourselves. Written with psychological depth and great lyrical precision, this suspenseful and groundbreaking novel delivers a voice for our times-funny, probing, skeptical, mischievous, profound. Andrew's Brain is a surprising turn and a singular achievement in the canon of a writer whose prose has the power to create its own landscape, and whose great topic, in the words of Don DeLillo, is "the reach of American possibility, in which plain lives take on the cadences of history."

    Praise for Andrew's Brain
     
    "Too compelling to put down . . . fascinating, sometimes funny, often profound . . . Andrew is a provocatively interesting and even sympathetic character. . . . The novel seamlessly combines Doctorow's remarkable prowess as a literary stylist with deep psychological storytelling pitting truth against delusion, memory and perception, consciousness and craziness. . . . [Doctorow] takes huge creative risks-the best kind."-USA Today

    "Cunning [and] sly . . . This babbling Andrew is a casualty of his times, binding his wounds with thick wrappings of words, ideas, bits of story, whatever his spinning mind can unspool for him. One of the things that makes [Andrew] such a terrific comic creation is that he's both maddeningly self-delusive and scarily self-aware: He's a fool, but he's no innocent."-The New York Times Book Review
     
    "A tantalising tour de force . . . a journey worth taking . . . With exhilarating brio, the book plays off . . . two contrasting takes on mind and brain. . . . [Andrew's Brain encompasses] an astonishing range of modes: vaudeville humour, tragic romance, philosophical speculation. . . . It fizzes with intellectual energy, verbal pyrotechnics and satiric flair."-The Sunday Times (London)
     
    "Dramatic . . . cunning and beautiful . . . strange and oddly fascinating, this book: a musing, a conjecture, a frivolity, a deep interrogatory, a hymn."-San Francisco Chronicle

    "Provocative . . . a story aswirl in a whirlpool of neuroscience, human relations, loss, guilt and recent American history . . . Doctorow reveals his mastery in the sheen of a text that is both window and mirror. Reading his work is akin to soaring in a glider. Buoyed by invisible breath, readers encounter stunning vistas stretching to horizons they've never imagined."-The Plain Dealer

    "Andrew's ruminations can be funny, and his descriptions gorgeous."-Associated Press

    "[An] evocative, suspenseful novel about the deceptive nature of human consciousness."-More
     
    "A quick and acutely intelligent read."-Entertainment Weekly
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJan 14, 2014
    ISBN9780804127769
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Andrew's Brain

    3/5

    185 ratings78 reviews

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    • 3/5
      E. L. Doctorow not at his best. The protagonist, Andrew, played the ¨ helpless victim¨ card too, too often, and I found myself not liking him very much.
    • 3/5
      A deft and abbreviated tour-de-force. It's told in the voice of sadsack professor Andrew and spins its widening gyre to touch on 9/11, the mystery of consciousness, parenthood, love and despair. Worth the read.-CJ
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed it until it was over, when I thought, "That's it?" Ultimately disappointing.
    • 5/5
      Outstanding book, needed 4 readings!
    • 3/5
      I listened to this book while doing some craft projects. I had read many reviews about this book when it first came out. I have mixed emotions towards this book because it skipped from one subject to the next sibject to fast for me to keep up. I did like the emotions Andrew had towards the other characters. Once I got used to the fast changes of subject, I enjoyed the story a lot more. This book did make me stop and reflect on my own life. I am giving it a middle rating because the author left to many loose ends.
    • 2/5
      I received this book through the early reviewers program, but only just got around to reading it this week. I'm really not sure what to make of it. I've read Ragtime and liked it, so I was expecting something similar from E.L. Doctorow. However, this is a very different book. Instead of a cast of characters, this book tells the story of just one: Andrew, a cognitive scientist. He recounts a difficult life in which he accidentally poisoned his young daughter, got divorced, lost his second wife on 9-11, and ends up working for the President. It's difficult to know which of these things are true. My best guess is that Andrew is a psych patient who has made up most of this story. Unfortunately, the truth is never revealed, which makes the book a very unrewarding read. I'm not sure if Andrew has a psychiatric illness or is just a weird, unlucky guy, but either way I didn't really like him all that much.
    • 1/5
      We're all Pretenders, Doctor, even you. Especially you. Why are you smiling? Pretending is the brain's work. It's what it does. The brain can even pretend not to be itself.There has got to be someone somewhere that will love this book but unfortunately I am not that person. Immediately when I finished this I felt like writing a scathing review of it but after calming myself down I am just going to do a short (calm, and respectful) review for this quick read. This started off reading like my philosophy textbook from my college class that I took, then it read like a textbook on the human brain, and finally it was like reading a liberal anti George W. Bush speech. Quite frankly I am still baffled on how we managed to move from Andrew, the main character, being a professor and teaching these complex things to ending up at the White House. I just didn't know what to make of Andrew and did not like him ever while reading the book. This book was just frustrating throughout. Quite honestly, the best thing about this book is that it was short (oh geez, I am starting on my scathing review now). I can't even imagine who I would recommend this book to but it clearly was not meant for a person like me.
    • 3/5
      Andrew considers himself as an agent of disaster. More than once in his life he has inadvertently set events in motion that had grave consequences. In this books he tells about some of these events and the impact they had on his life.

      This is a stream of consciousness that takes us back and forth between events, sometimes in the first person, sometimes in the third person. At first this is all very confusing, but the further we get into the book the more the storyline emerges until it all comes together in a final revelation that puts the whole situation into context. It feels as though the book is still growing on me.
    • 3/5
      This was unlike other books I have read by Doctorow. It seems like he just tossed this one off. It was a decent enough read but it helped that it was short. Don't think I could have read this as a long book. If you are interested in Doctorow, I would not read this one. It is stricktly for Doctorow fans.
    • 3/5
      I did not have a great connection to this book. It left me somewhat confused with the narrative sometimes slipping into third person then back. The entire book is a dialog between Andrew and someone named Doc (is it a psychiatrist, or his own consciousness, or...) Is it about lost love or is it a political statement? I believe its a book I might go back to at some point and read again, no doubt discovering new pieces to the puzzle in doing so, and yet my TBR list is so long, I don't know if I would want to take the time. It certainly didn't hold me enraptured in the way his last effort "Homer and Langley" did. If you can only have one E.L. Doctorow book.... no I can't give an example here because there are too many "must have" E.L. Doctorow books - this just isn't one of them.
    • 4/5
      This is an interesting novel. E. L. Doctorow is a master at his craft. This is a deceptively simple, short novel (200 pages). The narrator, Andrew, provides a variety of perspectives for his narrative. The story unfolds through dialogue with his psychiatrist, first person narrative, and third person narrative. The shifting perspectives help to emphasize the broken mind that is dealing with the multiple tragedies in his life. These include the death of a child, a broken marriage, a faltering career, the death of a second spouse, the abandonment of a second child, and the loss of the fundamental human rights the narrator is accustomed to having. The differences between the mind and the brain are explored and used to enhance the story. The ending of the novel is unexpected, but provides a nice political commentary on the world in which we live. Doctorow also forces the reader to acknowledge the unreliability of the narrator, memory, story-telling, and wish-fulfillment. This novel deserves to be read twice to help understand all of the nuances contained within it. Highly recommended!
    • 3/5
      I really wanted to like this book. I have read several other Doctorow books and loved them., especially THE MARCH. This one was just a little too weird for me. I couldn't get into it. One of my friends read it at my request and said "It was interesting. It was short." So, not a lot of love for this one. Sorry.
    • 4/5
      Andrew's Brain is not at all like Doctorow's earlier works. It is a significant change for him. It is structured as sessions with Andrew's shrink and a retelling of his life through those sessions. I can imagine that a devotee of Doctorow may not like this book but it is intriguing and satisfying. I read it twice in the same day.
    • 4/5
      My copy was a Goodreads First Reads giveaway.From the moment on the first page when Andrew hands the baby of his second marriage over to the care of his first wife, I was hooked. "...she reached out, gently took the swaddled infant, stepped back, and closed the door in his face."As he tells his disjointed story to a therapist one begins to wonder how much of it is actually true. But in Andrew's brain (mind) it is all too true. Some of it is plausible, some seems fantasy.But I was held by wondering what happened next? (Or what did Andrew think happened next?) Will he ever be able to sort it out? Will I? How reliable is anyone's memory?I have read and liked several of Doctorow's books. This one is different, but I liked it.
    • 4/5
      Read aloud by Doctorow himself, this short novel inhabits the mind of the narrator as he relates his story inn a circular fashion. Tragedy has seemed to follow Andrew all his life, and with his professional knowledge of of the brain and personality his recounting takes on multiple levels of meaning.
    • 3/5
      Many questions remain after finishing Doctorow's latest book, Andrew's Brain. Andrew is brilliant, troubled and grieving, but those are the only certainties I know. The trip into his mind is alternately clarifying and confusing. I am a long-time Doctorow fan, but this is not one I could recommend unconditionally.I am grateful to Goodreads for the opportunity to read this book.
    • 4/5
      This book had a large swell of popularity of late with its addition to several most anticipated book lists of 2014. I received this book through the early reader program, but subsequently misplaced it for several months, which turned out to be a shame. While not revolutionary, the stream of conscience style can and has been tried by writers normally with a less than great record of achievement. I found Andrews conversation with himself or his therapist entertaining, and full of thoughts for personal reflection. The pain that Andrew feels, came through via the words, the clinical view of the world, of a character that knows his flaws and is either too scared to fix them or incapable, I do not know, but a great read and story the same. I will definitely read this again in a bit, to see I if the initial infatuation grows to a relationship, much like einstein's dreams or the dub liners which have become book friends of mine that I will read, even though the words are all but memorized and the story lines known. Please take a chance on this book, it is well written, and does not waste words to plump up the page count like many books do these days.
    • 4/5
      It's hard to say why I read this book to the end, but I certainly am glad I did. There's something in the mystery of the narrator in the beginning that grabs (sorry that some reviewers have spoiled that mystery a bit), but it's more than that - it's an atmosphere of expectation (anxiety?) that won't let you set the book down until it's done. Which means you get to follow Andrew's involuntary free associations, tangents, and time-line wanderings as he seems determined to talk about his story without actually telling his story. This is not as frustrating as it may sound - it's more like how most of us think about things over the course of a few days. And when it's done, you've not only enjoyed Doctorow's wonderful prose, but Andrew will become quite real to you, and you'll know without a doubt why Andrew's brain is of such interest.Os.
    • 3/5
      I was excited to receive this as an early review because I have read several of Doctorow's books and have really liked them all. This was disappointing. The writing is excellent but I had a difficult time following the story and never connected with Andrew, or cared about him. Doctorow does build the story and at the end you understand why he started the story where he did in Andrew's life and you get where he was going. But, by the time I got to the end I didn't care and just wanted it to be done. Fortunately it is not a long book but I struggled to stay with it.
    • 3/5
      Andrew is a cognitive scientist, and a teacher. So he ponders and promulgates questions like "when and how does the brain become the mind?". We find him reviewing his life with a minimally participatory listener, who occasionally asks the kind of questions one expects of a therapist. Episodes of Andrew's life are revealed to the reader in seemingly erratic order, and his narrative begins to feel first unreliable, and ultimately bizarre. Did he cause the death of his child or is he merely "responsible" for it in some moral construct of his mind? Is he detained for psychological evaluation, or undergoing therapy of his own volition? Where is he? Was he really roomies with George W. Bush as an undergrad? And did that handstand in the Oval Office actually happen? Doctorow keeps the reader slightly off-balance throughout, and this novel would probably benefit from a re-reading. Unfortunately, I didn't care enough to give it that much more time, and I rate this low on the list of Doctorow novels I have read.
    • 3/5
      Having read other books by this author I was looking forward to this one. But I was sorely disappointed. The multiple voices and conversation between them was an interesting premise but instead made it confusing and tiresome. I was never engaged by the characters or the storyline. I was just glad when I finished it.
    • 5/5
      Brilliant! Spend a few hours inside the mind/brain of cognitive neuroscientist?........multiple personalities?......inadvertent disaster catalyst?......Andrew! Doctorow's use of language is masterful as he leads us on a quest for meaning, which after survival, is paramount to us humans. Just read it!
    • 3/5
      Andrew's Brain is my first book by E.L. Doctorow and, after putting it down, I'm a bit torn on if I would like to check out his back list. I'm really torn because on one hand I thoroughly enjoyed the narrative style and the unreliable narrator, but on the other hand I never felt as if the story was going somewhere with enough urgency to keep my attention from wandering - and wander it did. Still, I got through the book in a decent amount of time by sheer will, it's such a short read I felt guilty every time I put it down. To its credit, every time I picked it back up I ended up thinking, "ah - oh yes, he does write very well and what will happen next?" I hate it when books make me torn like that.Read the rest of this review at The Lost Entwife on Jan. 4, 2014.
    • 3/5
      Doctorow's novel is filled with interesting scenes and observations from beginning to end. Presented as a long, mostly one-sided dialogue between Andrew, a professor of cognitive science, and a psychologist, the story of Andrew's rather tragic life is effectively revealed in bits and pieces. The story of Andrew's love affair with one of his students comes quite compelling, in the reader is interested to see how it will play out.But when Andrew's story begins to intersect with real-life events and people, it goes badly off-track. What was Doctorow thinking? I guess that, like many others (myself included), there are some hatreds he just can't put aside. By bringing them into this book, however, he has ruined what started out as a pretty good story. The ending of this book is just.....stupid.
    • 4/5
      Andrew is a cognitive scientist telling his story to a therapist, or perhaps himself, in this absorbing novel from E.L. Doctorow which I read as an Early Reviewers copy from LibraryThing.Disaster happens around Andrew, most especially to the woman he loves and marries, Briony. As Andrew's stream of consciousness story unfolds, Doctorow's work asks the question, what is the mind? what is the brain? what is the soul?This short powerful novel will stay with me for a while I think.
    • 2/5
      I have never read any Doctrow before and was excited to give him a try to with fairly short novel instead of one of the more imposing ones. While I wasn't particularly put off by his prose style, the book never connected with me. The basic plot of a man who has terrible things happen to him seems like it could be potboiler melodrama, but the structure takes the suspense out of the narrative, giving some of the details out of order, which puts the focus on the character, making it seem like it might be more of a character study. We never get that far inside his head though. Also, the frequent references to Andrew's occupation (cognitive scientist) feel like they are supposed to add a symbolic or thematic layer, but if they did, I missed it. They never seemed to go anywhere. Finally, the book takes a surprising and abrupt turn into political satire, looking at early 200s Bush era issues, but by that point, the book is almost over, so that never really has time to go anywehre either. I have to say, I was disappointed. It's a short book and a quick read, so if any of these ideas is a particularl draw for you, it might work, but it's not one I'd ever revisit.
    • 3/5
      A look at the inner working of the mind, in particular, our unreliable narrator Andrews. Andrew himself is a professor of cognitive science, and in an ongoing session with his therapist the reader is treated to a up close and personal look at a brain slowly deconstructing. Doctorow has long been one of my favorite authors, but this is not one of my favorite novels. He has done many I liked better. I just don't think I ever bonded enough with Andrew to really immerse myself in what he was going through. There were, however, moments of insight and lines of imaginative force that made for interesting reading. ARC from Librarything.
    • 4/5
      You wouldn't think that a book about a dead wife, an abandoned child, 9/11, and a bumbling president would be funny, but getting inside Andrew's Brain is quite hilarious. The book is a discussion inside the head of a cognitive scientist who gets involved in a number of plain humorous situations, mostly of his own doing. I haven't read any Doctorow for over 15 years and it took me quite a few pages to get into this one, but once I hit the halfway point I raced through to the end because I was having such a good time.
    • 1/5
      Fully half of this book is about the extreme sexual attractiveness of a very young, petite, blonde woman. The story was graphic pedophilia with a thin veneer of artsiness. The one saving grace was the protagonist, who had an appealing, quirky voice. However, I prefer novels with things like plot and character development, of which this book was completely destitute. Calling it a giant stinking pile crap would be too generous.
    • 2/5
      I wanted to enjoy this book, I did not. Andrew's Brain is a book about an unreliable (and creepy) narrator, discussing his life to a third party. Check for other reviews as I am probably in the minority in my thinking.