Brain Fever is terrifying and exhilarating, a pleasure all the way through, which is maybe not what you'd expect from a novel about a middle-aged guy's crack-up. The language starts out jangly, ready to take off, from the beginning, and is downright jagged by the time Tim Rooney loses it, but you feel like you've been somewhere with this guy. Highly recommended.

The characters are so well crafted, it's as though you know more about them than what is written because you can imagine what they're thinking. I've never known anyone who's lost his mind, but I get the feeling that it would be just like this.

If I were going to write a book, I would want it to be just like this--smart, funny, clever, sad, sometimes subtle, sometimes overt. A thoroughly enjoyable read.

The comments of one 'Scotty Cocktail' notwithstanding, this is a wonderful novel by a great writer and a good friend. I just wanted to chime in here to make the average rating on this novel a bit more accurate so that others may be more inclined to give it a read.