Taken from http://www.eldoctorow.com

“Andrew’s Brain  is cunning... 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... Andrew may not be able to enjoy his brain, but Doctorow, freely choosing to inhabit this character’s whirligig consciousness, can.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“Too compelling to put down... fascinating, sometimes funny, often profound... Andrew is a provocatively interesting and even sympathetic character... The novel seamlessly combine’s 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

“A tour de force... Andrew’s ruminations can be funny, and his descriptions gorgeous.”
—Associated Press

“Tantalising... a journey worth taking... [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)

“Provocative... a story aswirl in a whirlpool of neuroscience, human relations, loss, guilt and recent American history... Reading [Doctorow’s] 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

“Mind bending... a fascinating and perplexing examination of a human being, invented by Doctorow but very real, who has suffered great trauma and desperately needs to believe he is not a monster.”
—St. Louis Post Dispatch

“Absorbing... In Doctorow’s capable hands, Andrew is revealed to be a unique and sympathetic character—you’re just never sure whether he’s a redeemed lout or criminally insane... Besides the wonderful prose, the book has humor and warmth and entertaining twists of plot...”
—Houston Chronicle

“This is a brief book and, like many of the author’s recent offerings, a seemingly simple pleasure. But Doctorow cannot do anything simply, and he can’t help but write well. His lines in passing are the sort that other writers might work for years to perfect. And his insights, beautifully embedded in an irresistible story, are worthy of the best sort of big book.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune

★ “In stunning command of every aspect of this taut, unnerving, riddling tale, virtuoso Doctorow confronts the persistent mysteries of the mind—trauma and memory, denial and culpability—as he brings us back to one deeply scarring time of shock and lies, war and crime. Writing in concert with Twain, Poe and Kafka, Doctorow distills his mastery of language, droll humor, well–primed imagination, and political outrage into an exquisitely disturbing, morally complex, tragic, yet darkly funny novel of the collective American unconscious and human nature in all its perplexing contrariness. Word will travel quickly about this intense and provocative novel by best–selling literary giant Doctorow.”
—Booklist, starred review

★ “Through this dialectic narrative, Doctorow connects to the common theme seen throughout his work: one’s history is often a battle between memory and self–struggle to maintain an image of morality and adequacy. Doctorow deftly captures the complex but beautiful vagaries of life in clean, simple language.”
—Library Journal, starred review

“Doctorow... has written a sort of Portnoy’s Complaint for the brain. Funny, thought provoking and profound.”
—Financial Times

“Looming above all is the question of whether Andrew’s brain produces his mind or if his mind rides his brain. And what makes a man or woman who they are?... These are [some] of the main matters this cunning and beautiful novel asks you to consider—and if you find no answers, you still have the lovely back–and–forth in metronomic rhythm of the facts of Andrew’s life and the lyrical observations that arise along the way of his living it. Strange and oddly fascinating, this book: a musing, a conjecture, a frivolity, a deep interrogatory, a hymn.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“One of our greatest living writers... a virtuosic storyteller with enormous range.”
—People

“Doctorow is a magician... His prose is dazzling.”
—Vogue

“On every level, [Doctorow’s] work is powerful... His sensitivity to language is perfectly balanced, and complemented by a gigantic vision.”
—Jennifer Egan

“E. L. Doctorow is a national treasure, and I mean this in a very specific sense: He has rewarded us, these 45 years, with a vision of ourselves, as a people, a vision possessed of what I might call ‘aspirational verve’—he sees us clearly and tenderly, just as we are, but also sees past that—to what we might, at our best, become.”
—George Saunders

“[His great topic is] the reach of American possibility, in which plain lives take on the cadences of history... Doctorow’s prose tends to create its own landscape, and to become a force that works in opposition to the power of social reality.”
—Don DeLillo

“A writer of dazzling gifts and boundless imaginative energy.”
—Joyce Carol Oates, The New Yorker