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Atmospheric Disturbances
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ADVANCE PRAISE: 'Rivka Galchen's Atmospheric Disturbances is playful yet profound, Murakami-esque yet original, analytical yet heartbreaking. It's an absolutely stunning and unforgettable debut.' Vendela Vida, author of Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name 'Rivka Galchen has written a powerful novel about love, longing, Doppler radar, and the true appreciation of a nice cookie with your tea. 'Atmospheric Disturbances' is fantastic.' Nathan Englander, author of 'The Ministry of Special Cases'. 'Reader, you are holding in your hand one of my favorite novels ever: Rivka Galchen's divinely hilarious, heartbreaking tale of Leo's search for his 'lost' wife Rema. This is a novel of Borgesian erudition, wit, and playfulness, though its obsessively pursued subject - as it rarely was in the Argentine's fiction - is love, the enraptured lover, and the mystery of the beloved, the intersection of love's fictions, realities, and pathologies. It is also as funny as any episode of the Simpsons (imagine Homer as a besotted and brilliant New York psychiatrist). The prose jumps with one astonishing observation, insight, and description after another. 'Atmospheric Disturbances' delivers unforgettable joy.' Francisco Goldman, author of 'The Divine Husband'. 'Galchen has created a heart breaking puzzle of a novel. Hilarious and daring. The novel tracks the way we seek to destroy our most precious love affairs and, in doing so, our own sanity. The hero, Leo, is like a brilliant mad scientist trying to prove that the earth is flat, because he desperately needs a ledge high enough to jump off of.' Heather O'Neill, author of Lullabies for Little Criminals
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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In this enthralling debut, psychiatrist Dr. Leo Liebenstein sets off to find his wife, Rema, who he believes has been replaced by a simulacrum. Also missing is one of Leo's patients, Harvey, who is convinced he receives coded messages (via Page Six in the New York Post) from the Royal Academy of Meteorology to control the weather. At Rema's urging, Leo pretends during his sessions with Harvey to be a Royal Academy agent (she thinks the fib could help break through to Harvey), and once Re- ma and Leo disappear, Leo turns to actual Royal Academy member Tzvi Gal-Chen's meteorological work to guide him in his search for his wife. Leo's quest takes him through Buenos Aires and Patagonia, and as he becomes increasingly delusional and erratic, Galchen adeptly reveals the actual situation to readers, including Rema's anguish and anger at her husband. Leo's devotion to the real Rema is heartbreaking and maddening; he cannot see that the woman he seeks has been with him all along. Don't be surprised if this gives you a Crying of Lot 49 nostalgia hit.
Starred Review. In this enthralling debut, psychiatrist Dr. Leo Liebenstein sets off to find his wife, Rema, who he believes has been replaced by a simulacrum. Also missing is one of Leo's patients, Harvey, who is convinced he receives coded messages (via Page Six in the New York Post) from the Royal Academy of Meteorology to control the weather. At Rema's urging, Leo pretends during his sessions with Harvey to be a Royal Academy agent (she thinks the fib could help break through to Harvey), and once Re- ma and Leo disappear, Leo turns to actual Royal Academy member Tzvi Gal-Chen's meteorological work to guide him in his search for his wife. Leo's quest takes him through Buenos Aires and Patagonia, and as he becomes increasingly delusional and erratic, Galchen adeptly reveals the actual situation to readers, including Rema's anguish and anger at her husband. Leo's devotion to the real Rema is heartbreaking and maddening; he cannot see that the woman he seeks has been with him all along. Don't be surprised if this gives you a Crying of Lot 49 nostalgia hit.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Voyage around her father...,
By
This review is from: Atmospheric Disturbances (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
You might view this book as either a beautifully-written and subtly inconclusive thriller about a doppelganger appearing for a man's wife, a detailed analysis of the assorted neuroses and psychoses of a New York psychiatrist, a pseudo-academic treatise on meteorology, a hefty measure of autobiography in which the writer indulges in a voyage around her father, who as stated died in 1994 of a sudden heart attack, and/or a load of nonsense masquerading as fiction!
The blurb states: "Atmospheric Disturbances investigates the moment of crisis when you suddenly understand that the reality you insist upon is no longer one you can accept, the person you love has been somehow reduced to merely the person you live with, and how you spend your life trying to weather the storms of your own making." All of which are true, though anyone reading the book could not help to think that the facsimile Rema is the real version and that Dr Leo has taken leave of his senses - maybe the fate of psychiatrists everywhere? Full marks to Rema for not giving up on him, though he appears every bit as gaga as his weather-changing patient Harvey (a name artfully chosen, I thought.) On the other hand, maybe this debate is irrelevant. This is a closely-observed book in which not an awful lot happens but a great deal of time is spent deconstructing it in minute detail. At first it seems refreshing, though as time wears on you tire of Dr Leo and his anally-retentive ramblings. His tale peters out with speculation about how he might go on living with the doppelganger, though we have no word on what Rema's views might be on that. Maybe that's an opportunity for the next novel? For me, the most decisive conclusion is that I want to visit Buenos Aires and maybe even Patagonia, though probably not with a self-obsessed American psychiatrist, nor with my wife or her mother or any of my clients!!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Extremely convincing, but not a good book,
By
This review is from: Atmospheric Disturbances (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
The plot, such as it is, has already been described in detail, so here's the quick version: a middle-aged psychiatrist believes his wife has been replaced. The perfect set-up for a paranoia thriller, perhaps? Well, yes, but this is not the author's intent.
The intent is to accurately describe, from the narrator's point of view, a slide into psychosis. The author succeeds in this, and for that has my respect, Unfortunately, this leaves us with a novel of minimal plot. The first half of the book attempts to preserve the mystery and keep the narrator's theory believable. Here, the author has my sympathy, as the last paragraph of the description on the book jacket reveals the truth about the protagonist's situation. The second half finally sees some narrative movement, but by this point, the novel has become rather tedious. Thanks to the publisher, what should be a slow, mysterious build-up in which the reader makes their own judgement becomes rather dull -- like watching the first half of The Matrix while Keanu Reeves tries to figure out the blatantly obvious. Rivka Galchen must be an expert on the condition the narrator suffers from, and paints an extremely convincing first-hand picture of the neuroses and delusions of the protagonist, although one would expect most men in his situation to simply experience a mid-life crisis, and buy a sports car and attempt to woo 20-something girls. We receive no sense of reality, or even location, as we read. Descriptions of places and situations are irritatingly thin, and the story essentially boils every scenario down to (a) how the allegedly replaced wife would have reacted in such a situation, (b) a situation the narrator is reminded of from his past, and (c) thoughts and justifications to tie events into his delusions of conspiracy. This story has endless possibilities, and handled by, say, Haruki Murakami, could have bewitched, charmed, excited, provoked and bemused the reader. As written by Galchen, this is merely two steps away from a research paper. The writing is not complex or difficult to follow, nor are the ideas presented likely to go over the heads of the average readers. The style is meticulous, yet dull, just like the the main character. Ultimately, as this book reaches it's conclusion, and the reader finds they have travelled full circle, Atmospheric Disturbances can be dismissed as and unsatisfying read, little more than an intellectual exercise on the part of the author, and most definitely a poor excuse for a novel, despite the positives already mentioned.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Magical realism makes for compelling reading,
By R. WEST-SOLEY "Rich West-Soley" (Birmingham, UK) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Atmospheric Disturbances (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
I've always loved the theme of doppelgangers, and this seemed like the perfect tale from the outset with its Stepford wife premise. The story is certainly original - a bizarre psychological mix of paranoia, delusion, and perceived realities - although it's not a realist tale in the strictest sense. Beneath the very odd surface it's an unconventional love story full of melancholy and sadness, and although it does feel slightly unresolved, the author writes such terse and eloquent prose - at times really beautiful. Writing against backdrops from New York to Amazonia, there's a touch of the magical realism of Garcia Marquez in there at times.
It's a novel of many layers and as such isn't an easy, throwaway read or something the reader will 'get' straight away - but it is compelling reading, and rewarding if you spare it the thinking time afterwards.
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