ATMOSPHERIC DISTURBANCES

by Rivka Galchen

The evening Dr. Leo Liebenstein's wife disappeared, she left behind one strange, significant clue: a woman who looks, talks and behaves exactly like her - or almost exactly like her.

While everyone else may be fooled, Leo knows better than to trust the senses in matters of the heart, and the arrival of his missing wife's double sends him off on a quixotic journey to reclaim his lost love. With the help of his psychiatric patient Harvey - who believes himself to be a secret agent who can control the weather - Leo attempts to unravel the mystery of the spousal-switch, the secret workings of The Royal Society of Meteorology in their cosmic conflict with the 49 Quantum Fathers, the enigmatic guidance of Dr. Tzvi Gal-Chen, and how he, or maybe his wife, or perhaps even Harvey, is at the centre of it all. From the streets of New York to the southernmost reaches of Patagonia, Leo's erratic quest ultimately becomes a test of how far he is willing to take his struggle against the uncontested truth he knows to be false.

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.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Novels, Literary Fiction, Book Club, Literature, Contemporary

240 pages, Paperback

First published May 27, 2008

About the author

Rivka Galchen (born 1976) is a Canadian-American writer and physician. Her first novel, Atmospheric Disturbances, was published in 2008. She currently is an adjunct professor in the writing division of Columbia University's School of Art. In 2010, she was chosen as one of the 20 best writers under 40 by The New Yorker.

Reviews

[Lynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has been widely reviewed, and I understand why. It's basic premise is unique, and the writing is sometimes stunning. As a first novel, I'd say it's fairly accomplished. The problem is I didn't really like it. The whole book kept me at an arm's length, as if I were reading an extended logic problem. At time's the writing was interesting, but at other times it seemed way too aware of its own cleverness (One line that sticks in my mind is "she centimetered toward me" or something like that). I like amazing, poetic language in a book, but I don't like it to be so aware of itself that it parades around the page like an exhibitionist proclaiming, "look at me! I'm clever!"
The book _is_ clever, and it includes references to Derrida, Lacan and Freud, leading me to believe that I and all my fellow English graduate students are the target audience for this book. Which is fine. I like a smart book. But I also want to care. And I didn't care: not about the narrator or his wife or any of the other characters who populate this book.
There's a line in the book when the narrator says that people critique Borges by saying that he's not emotional. The narrator says he thinks that's wrong, but he doesn't have time to elaborate. I viewed this as a missed opportunity to make a case for the non-emotional, intellectual book that I was reading in the guise of talking about Borges (again, "so smart! Look at me, I'm smart!"). Why introduce this idea just to avoid it, when the book so clearly begs this question?
There were many loose ends in this book, including the main plot line.
Right, I get it. Lack of resolution. Soooo post-modern. I could see what it was doing, I just didn't like it.

[Michael Ferro · Rating 5 out of 5]

ATMOSPHERIC DISTURBANCES was recommended to me since I am a fan of David Foster Wallace, Don DeLillo, and Thomas Pynchon—specifically when I asked for similar work authored by women. That said, let me say this: this book was simply incredible. Much like Wallace, there is an intensely personal narrative centered around mental health that hearkens to INFINITE JEST, as well as THE BROOM OF THE SYSTEM. Much like Pynchon, there is absurd humor centering around a bizarre mystery that slowly unveils itself and begs the reader to wonder: Wait, just what is real and what's not real? Rivka Galchen is not only a brilliant writer, but her knowledge across a vast many fields—ranging from medical to meteorological—is very impressive. This is a novel that was clearly written with very careful precision and craft.

Like many postmodern-inspired novels of unusual fiction, it is hard to categorize this book, but if you're a fan of the aforementioned well-known writers and enjoy a deep dive into the unsettled mind of a somewhat unreliable narrator on the search for truth and understanding, this novel is for you. I'm very much looking forward to reading Galchen's other works and finding other similar works by writers across the globe. Bottom Line: ATMOSPHERIC DISTURBANCES is truly a gem of a novel.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was initially quite taken with this book. It is coolly intellectual, mysterious, unique, and filled with fun vocabulary words and complex sentence structure. Then about halfway through, I found myself getting bored. It was a little too esoteric and scientific, too detached, and headed absolutely nowhere. When I finished it, I realized it had succeeded in rousing no emotion in me whatsoever, and that made me think about it in a completely different way. Perhaps this was the point of it (one of them, anyway) -- to disengage from the manipulating forces of emotion in storytelling, and focus instead on the rational (or irrational) processing of information -- too spend so much time and energy using the intellectual, deducing capabilities of the brain and end up with results that are not straight-forward and exact, but hugely distorted. Great. Still, someone else's mental masturbation inevitably leaves me unsatisfied. I still think it's smart and interesting. Although my love affair with it ended so disappointingly, I hope we can be "just friends"...

[Jimmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

[On the doppler effect...] Being aware of this distortion of perception allows scientists to take advantage of the distortion itself in order to gather accurate data about the actual, and not just the perceived, world. ... these distortions [when] properly understood enable a more accurate understanding of the real world. p 45

Obviously Galchen is not only referring to the doppler effect here, but also to other types of distorting effects. Like the one she is using--the unreliable narrator.

The problem with unreliable narrators is that there must be a truth worth discovering beyond the distortion. In Atmospheric Disturbances the truth beyond that distortion is entirely uninteresting and trivial. The characters were flat and seemed like exaggerations. Pretty soon the distortion itself (which in the first 50 pages was at least somewhat interesting and funny) also loses its steam.

The unreliable narrator also poses another challenge. One of mapping. In some sense, everything the narrator says must be mapped onto a reality that is at odds with the narrator's worldview. But that mapping must not become predictable or obvious, must not become 1:1. There can't be a sense of the author winking behind every line. The unreal must seem real, as if it were an unreality existing only for itself.

Because it failed on this second point as well, the book just came across as incredibly contrived.

And lastly, not to be too negative, but the ending sucked. I don't need resolutions or anything, I get the open endedness thing. But this book just built up all these questions and then petered the fuck out. The last 100 pages were all of the same frequency. It could have petered out 100 pages earlier and not much would have changed in terms of overall book-ness... There was no variation to the plot or characters, no turbulence whatsoever that would have even made things more interesting.

However, I still managed to enjoy this book mostly because:

1. I imagined it as a Haruki Murakami book if Murakami had the good sense to laugh at himself once in a while. We have a disappearance and a search and dogs instead of cats. Although there is a disturbing lack of breasts and no cooking of spaghetti. Perhaps that is its main flaw. It is actually more intelligent than (some of) Murakami's novels, though it is less interesting plot-wise.

2. I really enjoyed the use of science and scientific theories as a metaphor for other general-life things. A personal weakness of mine. In truth I probably gave this book an extra star just for that. (Rest assured, my rating system is otherwise scientifically sound and completely objective!). I liked the intellectual gymnastics Galchen was trying out here. I just wish it worked with an actual novel instead of a series of skits.

[Oriana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gosh, well wow. I liked this book quite a lot. It is certainly original and cool. Also a really great blend of beautiful language, surprising insight, wonderfully strange characters, and fascinating factualness. It reads very quickly, really propelling you forward, in a sort of frenzied rush to the point when all the secrets will be revealed. I found myself getting very nervous when I realized I only had thirty pages left... then twenty... then five... I knew there wasn't nearly enough wordspace left for Rivka to extricate us satisfactorily from the net she'd woven. And to be honest, she didn't. But I didn't mind as much as I thought I would, though I do wish she'd written another fifty or a hundred more pages; the story could have easily sustained it. I almost want to read it over again right away, not because I think more will be revealed (I suspect ten subsequent readings would only leave me ten times more confused and unsure), but because it really is a pleasure to be immersed in her characters and her creation.

Oh! And a great use of visual aids. Why don't more novels have intermittent pictures?

So anyway, I think the comparisons to Murakami and Pynchon were a bit hasty, but she is definitely a good thing. I'd be happy to read lots more of her writing.

[Anna Savage · Rating 1 out of 5]

It took me nearly a year to finish this book, which I should have been able to read in two hours. I could not emotionally connect to anyone or anything in it for a single second, so I'd repeatedly pick it up, read two pages, and set it back down, never having engaged. Everything about this book, from the misuse of scientific catchphrases for quirk to the untrustworthy narrator to the smug, look-how-creative-I-am tone each sentence was soaked in, made me want nothing to do with it or anything else by this author. I will give her this: the last 25 pages started to be about something, something real-world that we can all relate to, and when Galchen dropped the too-cool-for-school attitude to explore this, using the mental condition of the protagonist as a device to explore the difficulties of human connection, I finally bought it. I think she was trying to achieve this same thing throughout the novel, she just got in her own way for the first 90% of it, the language so affected and the characters treated with such lack of compassion that it wasn't until she was deep enough into her own writing to drop the act that she could produce something truly reflective of her talent as a writer.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was really bizarre but I ended up liking it. I would have liked a bit more of an explanation of things.

[Fraser Simons · Rating 4 out of 5]

An analyst pulls on various knowledge in his field when he convinces himself of the Doppler effect, and determines his wife is a doppelgänger herself. He then discerns esoteric clues based on esoteric clues as to where he might find his real wife. But it’s actually a story about rifts in identity shifting the perception of people. A literalization of the “I don’t even know who you are anymore”, but from a psychological travelogue romp where you don’t know if he’s right or wrong, or what that quite means. It won’t be the kind of story some people will be able to be invested in, but I found it engaging and insightful, and quirky—in a good way. Just the right amount of challenging. Plus, lots of interesting analyst shop talk. A confluence of stuff I’m interested in, basically.

[M. Hornbuckle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Rivka Galchen's first novel, and it's the most impressive first novel I've read in I don't know how long. In a way, it's a novel about weather, but really it's about perceptions of reality. She's exploring some of the same themes that I'm currently writing about and doing it so well, it makes me question my own work, but it also reinforces the idea that these themes are floating around in the zeitgeist, and perhaps they are even important.

Anyway, this is a great fucking book, and Rivka Galchen is a great fucking writer. I only regret that I missed her recent reading in NYC because I had to rehearse with my stupid rock band.

[Drew · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd had this sitting on my shelf for a good six months before finally deciding to read it. And...what a disappointment it was. Leo Liebenstein believes his beloved wife has been replaced by a "simulacrum": an interesting concept, though nearly identical to that of The Echo Maker. The difference is that the narrator of The Echo Maker is a firm subscriber to a "consensus view of reality," while Galchen's narrator is Leo himself, making it somewhat uncertain whether his delusions are precisely that.

And that could have been good, even really good, like critic James Wood, incredibly, seems to think it was. He gushes over the "triple unreliability" of the book and lauds her esoteric analogies to meteorology. And these things are interesting, no doubt, but for me they're overshadowed by the fact that Galchen is just not that great a writer. Her evocations of Argentina and Patagonia are satisfactory but not memorable. Her writing completely fails to capture the rhythms of thought or the melodies of speech. Am I supposed to assume this disconnect with the way real people think and talk is somehow related to Liebenstein's inexplicable and rapidly blooming craziness? Maybe, but that doesn't make it any more fun to read.

As for the movement of the plot itself, there isn't much. Those who like resolution in a novel will probably be deeply, deeply unsatisfied here. That's not necessarily true for me, but I'll say this: when I'm reading a novel with an unreliable narrator who has paranoid hallucinations, I'd much rather see a little bit of a twist. If I've been pretty well convinced that the narrator is crazy, I'd like him to be vindicated at the end, at least in some small way. If I'm on his side and believe his hallucinations (or whatever), then I don't mind finding out that he was insane the whole time. That can work. What I don't like is when it looks as if he's crazy the whole time, and then at the end, yep, he's crazy. What I dislike more is when you never find out at all.

In short: I'm only glad I read it because now I no longer have to wonder whether it's good or not.

[Alexandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm giving in to the temptation to share thoughts about a book before I've finished it, which I sometimes regret because what if it starts out strong and intriguing, but then turns out badly, like _Jurassic Park?_ I am going to take that risk with this book, to which I wish I could give 10 stars.

I mostly want to respond to some pans of this book- comments like "She's no Pynchon" and accusations of flat and unlikeable characters and a meandering plot. No, Galchen is not Pynchon and that is a wonderful thing: her insights into the surreal turns an alienated mind can take (and start finding normal)informed by psychiatry, introversion, modern living and the weather are gently funny. They are the reflections of a character who lives very deeply in his own mind and anxiety, but his delusional projections lack the excessive plot twists and caricatures and paranoia of Pynchon and Philip K Dick. Instead of being hurriedly pulled through an externalized freakscape like Vineland, _Atmospheric Disturbances_ feels more like being taken gently by the hand and led by this hapless character into his private comfort zone of distorted thinking, scientific misinterpretation, disappointment, longing, defense against heartache that only makes it worse. Unhappy as it makes him, it's home and we're invited in for tea and cookies.

I think it's a lovely and astute reflection of inner life in modern circumstances.

[Magdelanye · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was already aware of the need to overcome the confines of my lonely point of view....How to make deductions from my restricted knowledge.... Was it me or the object doing the moving? p50

Leo is not satisfied with reality.
Specifically, he is certain that his beautiful young wife has been kidnapped by renegade meteorologists, and that the woman claiming to be her, despite her uncanny resemblance and intimate personal knowledge, is a simulacrum.

Don't be taken in by the leaden beginning or waste time wondering about the narrators credentials, if he's reliable ( he's not) or if the book is even worth reading ( it is). RG not only questions the authority of the psychiatric opinion, she skewers it in this multifaceted romp through the sacred halls of analysis, busting out a window to take us to the far reaches of Patagonia.

On the way, as if by chance, we find a fingerprint of alienation, distancing ourselves from paranoia and preconceptions to explore the contours of identity and the effect of unresolved loss on the notion of reality, coming to " the unflagging perception of ...insignifigance" p199

Only reality can escape the limits of our imagination. p160

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me, halfway into the book: “I don’t want to jinx anything, but I don’t think this book has made one false move yet.”

On the very first page, Dr. Leo Liebenstein, a psychiatrist in New York, tells us that last December, a woman who looked almost exactly like his wife, Rema, entered the apartment, as if she was actually his wife, Rema. She looks like Rema, dresses like Rema, has Rema’s purse and sounds a lot like her (her hair even has the same grassy smell from her shampoo), but it’s definitely not Rema. Leo is convinced Rema has either been kidnapped or has left him, allowing this imposter to slip in and take her place.

If you follow the lives of past cast members of SCTV like I do, you might remember the sad story of early SCTV member Tony Rosato, who was charged with harassment against his wife and child back in 2005, believing that they were not who they said they are, but were carefully-disguised imposters. It’s a real mental disorder, and it’s called Capgras Delusion. Because the story’s being told from Leo’s point of view, we never get to hear anyone utter this phrase, but even seeing the world through Leo's eyes, it’s hard to see the evidence he's seeing and still come up with the conclusions he's drawing.

(EDIT: in her interview with Bookslut, Galchen notes that she's not interested in Leo's medical reasons for his condition, and it's true that, if you squint at the book at the right angle, it can be read is a PKD-esque shifting reality scenario.)

"I didn't come up with this craziness," I said. "It came to me, not from me." – Dr. Leo Liebenstein, Atmospheric Disturbances

For several years, Leo has been treating a patient named Harvey, who delusionally believes that he is being employed by The Royal Academy of Meteorology (a real organization in the book, though not in our world), who he believes are locked into a perpetual battle with an organization called the 49 Quantum Fathers (not a real organization in our world or the book’s world [that we know of {ominous music}]). The Royal Academy is dedicated to preserving randomness in the world’s weather; the 49 Quantum Fathers want to make weather repeatable, ordered. Harvey won’t be swayed from his belief that The 49 (for short) occupy “several possible worlds” and make their money through speculative farm futures, and that they are a serious threat to the world’s weather.

As part of his therapy, Leo and Rema find a name in a Who’s Who of meteorology (Dr. Tzvi Gal-Chen) and begin to write to Harvey as Dr. Gal-Chen. Harvey keeps leaving town on signals he’s receiving (in his own mind) to “fight back against weather ordering” in other parts of the country. Rema creates a fake email for Dr. Gal-Chen and writes to Harvey from it, imploring him as a high-ranking member of the Royal Academy to please stay in New York. “The Academy needs you here in town,” she pleads. It doesn't work: Harvey is soon discovered in Oklahoma, chasing a tornado, fighting The 49 Quantum Fathers on the ground, in the air, and in his mind.

Since the first numerical prediction model we have witnessed a steady improvement in forecasting large scale flows. Yet on the human scale (i.e., the mesoscale), little to no improvement has been reported. Several reasons have been cited...yet the most obvious reason (to me, at least) is: we cannot tell what the weather will be tomorrow (or the next hour) because we do not know accurately enough what the weather is right now. - Tzvi Gal-Chen, “Intialization of Mesoscale Models: The Possible Impact of Remotely Sensed Data”

The quote from Dr. Gal-Chen is real. Dr. Gal-Chen is real. He is the real father of the author, Rivka Galchen, and is a real meteorologist. He is an innovator in the area of single-doppler radar technology, which is described in some detail in the book. He is also a character in Atmospheric Disturbances, by Rivka Galchen.

Once Rema and Leo start to use Tzvi as a diversion for Harvey, they start to get interested in the real person. They print out a picture of Dr. Tzvi Gal-Chen and his family and hang it on the refrigerator. The photo is in the book. It’s (presumably) a real photo of Rivka Galchen and her family. It’s a nice meta-textual element that threads through the book.

But then, there’s this imposter-Rema. Who is she? Is she an imposter? Why did she bring home a dog? (The real Rema doesn’t even like dogs!) And how did she get all of Rema’s clothes?

Me, 50 pages from the end: “God, she really hasn’t made a single wrong move. This is incredible. I don’t know how she’s going to wrap this all up, but I'm on board.”

This is an unnerving book. We see what’s happening. Most people in the book see what’s happening. Even Harvey (who Leo later teams up with to search for the "real" Rema) seems to know what’s happening. But Leo can’t see it. He travels to Rema’s childhood home in Buenos Aires and meets her mother, Magda. Magda doesn’t hasn't kept in touch with Rema for years and only met Leo once a long time ago. When Leo tells her he is “a friend of Rema and her husband,” she believes it. Why shouldn’t she? Throughout the town, Leo sees women with “Rema’s Hips” or “a tilt of the head similar to Rema.” When Rema follows him to Buenos Aires to get him back, he hears her through the phone, and it sounds like the real Rema. But in person? Not Rema. Galchen (herself an MD working on public health issues in South America before turning to fiction) fashions Leo’s inner monologue and all its shortcomings with rigorous, almost mathematical exactitude. Not just logically, but tonally. Leo analyzes every situation with a logician’s rigor, even though he's playing with impure data. I love this line, in which he’s discussing a meteorological paper he’s reading to acquaint himself with Dr. Gal-Chen’s work. He notices a reference to Plato in the book, and says,

Appeals to antiquity, well, appeal, yes, but deploying such a rhetorical move in such a context was highly unusual; clearly it signaled something; it would be foolish to contend otherwise.

There’s something about the way Galchen has him say, “well, appeal, yes,” that just felt so natural to me. Like someone delivering a lecture to a class, but inside his own mind, saying the rhetorical flourish in his head to himself just because that’s where that rhetorical flourish is supposed to go. Leo knows something might not be right, but he doesn’t prod it too hard.

If you’re thinking all this could be solved by just TELLING Rema what he thinks (“you’re an imposter!”), like this were a poorly-written rom-com where the movie could be cut in half by one person saying “Wait, that’s not what I meant, come back and let's talk this out,” you’re half-right. But this isn’t pride: it’s illness. And it’s highly analytical illness. In Leo's mind, there’s no point in asking her – she’s either going to say no, I’m not an imposter, which he assumes is what an imposter would say, or she’ll say yes, I am an imposter, and we’re still at square one, looking for the real Rema. To Leo, the only solution is to think his way out of the problem.

Galchen turns the plot back on itself in dozens of ways. Leo emails Dr. Gal-Chen, and, amazingly, Tzvi responds. First, about Harvey’s condition, then, about Leo’s problems. Is Rema still running this account? Is Leo really getting these emails? Is a well-regarded meteorologist really advising Leo about his marital problems? How is this possible? Does he think Leo is a member of the Royal Academy? Is Leo actually a member of the Royal Academy? Maybe. He is, after all, heading to Patagonia with Harvey next week to start some new weather-related job, which he’s going to fake his way through – after all, he’s not the meteorologist he claims to be. But, he rationalizes, it might bring him one step closer to finding Rema.

Although Galchen threads in some genuine humor, this book is not a laugh-riot (one blurb on the back cover says it’s “as funny as an episode of The Simpsons,” and encourages us to imagine Leo as “Homer Simpson as a besotted New York psychiatrist,” which sets up for some seriously false expectations). The humor is cringeworthy, but it’s more like nervous giggles than belly-laughs. The atmosphere of the book is never less than claustrophobic. I mean, REALLY claustrophobic. Inside Leo’s mind, there is little room to breathe. Think the pattern-creating protagonist of Witold Gombrowicz's Cosmos for reference.

Me, 5 pages from the end: “Oh my god, she’s going to do it! She’s going to make it! This could be a perfect book!”

Galchen pushes the concept farther than I ever thought possible, and does so without ever letting open the release valve. She never affords the broad wink to the audience, the poke in the ribs to remind us that this is all going to work out, or the omniscient declaration of what's really happening. Like Tom McCarthy’s Remainder, Galchen creates a hermetic prison for her protagonist, a cyclical maze in which notions of entrance and exit become irrelevant, and the solution comes with the endless replay of the patterns within. I finished each page waiting for a cop-out, a sign that the premise couldn’t be completed as plan, the sticky sounds of footsteps walking across a newly painted floor, the only way out of the corner, if only because 1. it's a debut novel, and 2. it's such a complex pattern, it's hard to imagine anyone, let alone a debut author, pulling it off. Can she sustain the mystery, the confusion, the ambiguity, to the very end?

Me, on reading the last line: “She did it.”

[Yulia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rivka Galchen knows how to well and she writes well. I'll start with that. Be positive! I'd even agree with the flap copy by an unpaid editorial assistant that this book has many moments that are moving, sophisticated, an compassionate. No small accomplishment.

The problem is, do we really need another book about an extremely rare form of brain damage? Are you sure? In this case, the form of agnosia is Capgras, in which you recognize the people you know, but believe they've been replaced by imposters or look-alikes. Leo, a psychiatrist, is certain his wife Rema has been replaced by another woman who acts almost exactly as she does. And so we get the foundation for many thoughtful and even stirring reflections on love, memory, identity, authenticity, and some other big intangible nouns: throw in commitment, trust, honesty, transparency, and stability. So sure, the book is chock full of loveliness. If only it were peopled by real humans. No, Capgras doesn't make Leo inhuman. But I don't buy that he's a full-bodied character either. Neither is his patient Harvey, nor the meteorologist Tzvi Gal-chen. In fact, the only identifiable, full-bodied individual in this book is the supposed imposter, Rema.

So it becomes difficult to care about what happens to Leo or Harvey, when you know they're just characters created to enable Galchen to expound on her theories on the above intangibles. Not only does this make the book frustrating, but it's incredibly unsatisfying as a result. So what to do? Hope she fills her next novel only with Remas, people who are not who they seem to be.

********************************************************

Undoubtedly Galchen can write well, and her story drew me in, but economic disturbances, you could say, prevent me from focusing right now on her tale. I'll return to it when the election is over and my mind is clearer, but so farGalchen has kept me interested. My only hope is that she keeps her focus on the narrator's wife, Rema, and not his delusional patient, Harvey.

********************************************************

A review by James Woods in the New Yorker has inspired me to consider this book again, after I'd reconsidered my initial interest: no, not another over-hyped first novel. Who knows? I did like her short story in the New Yorker; perhaps she can keep my interest for an entire novel without showing off too much.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this quite a bit. I'm usually not all that hot for experimental or postmodern fiction, and I'm not even sure if this falls into either of those categories -- for all its conceptual noodling, the book was still a pretty straight-ahead narrative. Not the most warm fuzzy story I've ever read, but really kind of sympathetic in spite of itself. All the eclectic erudite stuff I found fun, and there was definitely some thoughtful stuff about the nature of reality, identity, coincidence, etc. to chew on.

Come to think of it, the last book I read -- Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply -- was about identity shifts.

And -- I'm not quite done yet -- just yesterday I was reading this article in the Atlantic about Anagnorisis, the first time I'd ever encountered the word. AND! Finishing the book in bed last night, in the last ten pages there was the word AGAIN! Coincidence? Conspiracy? You tell me.

This is not for everyone, I think, but I had a very good time with it.

[RandomAnthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know sometimes you encounter a book, movie, etc. and you can't tell if the artifact was self-consciously arty or if you just weren't attentive enough to "get" the artifact? Well, this evening I finished Atmospheric Disturbances. I thought the novel was strong but perhaps too obtuse to enjoy. Galchen's short, clipped sentences were kind of cool. The Borges and Murakami influences were obvious, not in a bad way, but I felt like I was working too hard as the reader to piece together the literary devices in ways I don't have to with Borges and Murakami. I liked the weather connections and the questions associated with perception and reality. But I felt at arm's length from the book pretty much through the entire read (and yes, I know, technically, I was at an arm's length from the book, as I was holding it at the time).

Fun but not that fun, I guess. My friend Dan says some music "feels like homework." Atmospheric Disturbances wasn't quite a homework assignment but failed to satisfy all the same. Ok. Not great.

[Stacia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a random selection from the library shelves & I hit a winner. The cool, clinical tone was perfect for the story of mental derailment from reality. The story brought up some provoking thoughts about reality (what it is vs. what we perceive), how we rationalize things, how we engage or detach from the world around us, how we cope. I'd recommend it to some, but I realize it is not a book that will appeal to others.

[Darwin8u · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll review it tomorrow. A bit of madness in a mad mad world. Love is blindness, but it is also paranoia, heartbreak, fickle, obtuse, and likely to change in a heartbeat. Love is loneliness that attracts and repels you to those who mean the most.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

Atmospheric Disturbances is the story of Leo, a psychiatrist who comes home one day to find that the woman in his home--though she looks almost exactly like his wife--is not in fact his wife. This sets him off on a search for his real wife that takes him to Buenos Aires (her birthplace) and then down to Patagonia. Along the way, he is influenced by a metereologist, Tzvi Gal-Chen (who, odd though it may be, I can only assume to be the author's father, given various things revealed during the book), whose work he reads and associates with his own search; and also by Harvey, a patient of Leo's who frequently disappears after he is instructed (or so he believes) by a secret society to travel to different places so as to control the weather in an ongoing, worldwide weather war. Leo's wife, Rema (or, as Leo views her, Rema's doppelganger), pursues Leo to South America in an effort to convince him of his obvious (to the reader, at least) psychosis.

It's an interesting premise, to be sure (though the doppelganger novel has been done before, and done better--try Saramago's The Double), but Galchen did not impress me with her execution.

First of all, the book is lauded in the reviews on the back as a number of things: humor; romance; psychological thriller; etc. But the story is almost never humorous, in any sense of the word. And the thriller aspect of it, to the extent it exists, is not compelling. What this book is, at its heart, is a romantic tragedy. Rema and Leo both love each other--that much is clear--but each is destined for frustration. Leo believes that his real love (his real wife) has disappeared, and his love for her leaves him unable to love the doppelganger he believes has replaced her. At the same time, Rema loves her husband and follows him, literally, to the ends of the world, but she is destined to be frustrated by standing by a man who no longer believes that she is actually herself. This book is tragic from the very beginning, as we see Leo spiral slowly into psychosis, and I fail to see the other aspects that the book reviews allude to. I believe that you will enjoy this book more if you simply go into it with the understanding that it is fundamentally a tragedy--and a moving and heartbreaking one, at that.

If mischaracterization were the only issue, I would have rated this book higher, but it suffers from another flaw that is crippling for any novel, no matter the genre: it lacks believability. The credibility of the novel peters out at the same time as Leo plunges deeper into his psychosis. My best guess is that this stems from the fact that Leo is the narrator of the book, and Galchen must have struggled greatly to convey a plausible story from a man who is steadily losing his sense of reality. Alas, I think the author failed in her effort. She raises a number of questions that go unaddressed, and she jumps over the answers by leaping into an abrupt ending. Some may excuse this deficiency by saying that anything hard to understand was simply a figment of Leo's psychotic imagination, but that answer is glib and unsatisfying. An unreliable narrator and a complete story are not mutually exclusive.

I can overlook the overly clinical writing style (attributable, no doubt to Leo's occupation, but still an unfortunate choice for narration) and the unnecessary, strange appearance of the author's father in the story. And I think the book has tremendous potential as a romantic tragedy. But in the end, the elements of the story are lost to the author's control and the reader is left grasping for the plausibility needed to make this a good novel.

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Atmospheric Disturbances is great, and very, very clever. I was really impressed by Rivka Galchen's debut novel. In its erudition, wordplay, humor, and unreliable narrator, it reminded me of Lolita. Atmospheric Disturbance's Leo Liebenstein, much like Humbert Humbert, manages to be captivating, even while you're shaking your head at him. With its references to academia, psychiatry, meteorology, and literature (i.e. specialized topics), this novel reminded me of Special Topics in Calamity Physics. If you enjoyed either of the aforementioned books, Atmospheric Disturbances is for you.

Dr. Leo Liebenstein is a middle-aged psychiatrist with a much younger wife named Rema. One day, Rema comes home to their apartment. But Leo sees at once that it's not Rema. Rather, it's a woman who looks and sounds just like her. But there are subtle differences, which he alone can discern. Knowing that the real Rema has been replaced with this simulacrum, Leo sets off to find her. Leo finds that this mystery is entangled with his psychiatric patient Harvey, a man who believes he's a secret agent who can control the weather. Leo's search takes him from New York City to Argentina, as he gets further entangled in a plot with far-reaching implications.

Sound wacky? It is! But it's also fiercely intelligent and cleverly constructed, with lots of layers and deeper meaning. Galchen makes great use of occasional pictures and diagrams. Leo is a very slippery narrator. He's always insisting that what he says and does is perfectly normal, as if he's trying to convince himself as much as the reader. He's constantly contradicting himself. Atmospheric Disturbances is a great meditation on reality versus fantasy, sanity versus insanity, and truth versus lies. It's about relationships, whether we can ever actually know someone, and the sometimes stifling expectations we can have of the people we love. I couldn't put it down.

Atmospheric Disturbances is a great choice if you're in the mood for a witty, offbeat piece of fiction. It's entertaining and thought-provoking in equal measure. I really enjoyed Rivka Galchen's particular brand of weird.

[Robert Blumenthal · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this to be a really hard book to review. I'm not sure I totally got it, and I admit I found some of the quirkiness to be somewhat annoying at times. And not getting a book does not necessarily detract from my enjoyment (Kafka on the Shore by Murakami is a prime example). I sensed at the end that it was essentially that the narrator was mentally ill and suffering from marital discord.

Leo Liebenstein, a psychologist living in New York, believes that Rema, his beautiful, much younger Argentinian wife is a simulacrum. It looks just like her, but he believes in the depths of his consciousness that she is an impostor. He believes that his actual wife is missing, and he goes to Argentina in an attempt to find her. Through Harvey, a patient of his, he gets in contact with some meteorological society which is run by Tyzi Gal-Chen (in the acknowledgements, the author gives special thanks to her beloved Tyzi). In Argentina he meets Rema's mother who he uses to help in his pursuit.

The novel is beyond quirky (an example, one of the characters goes by the description "the Rema-waisted Waitress). And it is consistently unclear what is reality and what is the delusions of this extremely unreliable narrator's mind. And yet, although at times I was frustrated, at other times I was rapt with where the author was going with all this. She has been compared to Pynchon and Foster Wallace and she is quite the creative novelist, to say the least. It is not my favorite style, though within this style, she did some very good things.

[Ari · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a very strange book.

Some reviewers have likened Galchen to Murakami, but although both writers paint surreal landscapes with words, Murakami's landscapes are masterpieces along the lines of Salvadore Dali, Galchen is more like Gregoire Michonze.

Galchen's main character is a psychiatrist who one day looks at his wife and convinces himself that she is an imposter. Her "disappearance" inexplicably coincides with the disappearance of one of his patients. While "searching" for his "real wife", he becomes an imposter himself: to his patient, his mother-in-law and any number of individuals linked to a covert meteorological society that purports to control the weather.

I didn't like Atmospheric Disturbances. The perspective of the main character is so delusionally skewed that it made me feel mentally ill as I tried to keep up with his train of illogical thought. I found the discussions on meteorology tedious and the allegories difficult to grasp. I have a deep suspicion that I Just Didn't Get It.

Although the story hooked me and drew me in, I found it an almost entirely joyless read.

[James Murphy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't care for it. There's not much story. That fact is acceptable in itself. We read many things in which there's little narrative direction. Lacking much story is alright if a novel or memoir or nonfiction chronicle is written in an energetic, absorbing style in which the primary interest is the language or the stylistic elements themselves. That's not true of Atmospheric Disturbances, so it's less interesting than it should be, or at least as I'd expected and think it could be. Most of the plot is misdirection conveyed by the protagonist's confusion and by mistaken identity. That can carry a narrative only so far. If not supported by an energetic prose or by characters with appeal, it quickly becomes stale. Near the end of the book I began thinking of it as meditative, that Leo ruminates for 240 pages about his wife, the missing Tzvi Gal-Chen, weather conditions, and what they all mean to him. Trouble is, the meditation doesn't come to any kind of conclusion. And I began thinking of it as essentially a short story expanded to novel, not very successfully.

[Srinivas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Did I read this book? Did someone else read it for me? Did I feel like I was reading this book but someone else was reading it for me? Did someone else read the book and I felt like I was reading it? WTF! What is up with this book?!! There was a certain charm and novelty to the original conceit of this book which, I suppose the author put together from her Psychiatry rotation and listening to her meteorologist father talking shop. However, all the good things about that idea disappear at about page 100. Well, that's not bad, right? The book held my attention for about a 100 slow pages. The problem is, there are another 140 pages to go and Ms. Galchen has little to say. I read about Capgras syndrome in med school and what I learned in those few paragraphs was enough. I learned nothing about meteorology in school and I was okay with that. This author offers nothing. Nothing in terms of entertainment and definitely nothing enlightening.

[Amos]

I love an author with a big vocabulary, but a big vocabulary does not a great author make. This book was just so.... dull. I groaned every time I went to pick it up, so I stopped.

[Elevate Difference · Rating 5 out of 5]

In some cases, you may be midway through a story, novel, or film before realizing you’re dealing with an unreliable narrator. He or she is biased, withholding information, or mentally unstable. (Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s disturbing story “The Yellow Wallpaper” springs to mind as just one example.) In Atmospheric Disturbances, the debut novel by Rivka Galchen, it is apparent early on that the main character, psychiatrist Dr. Leo Liebenstein, is off his rocker. Perhaps that’s putting it too strongly. Liebenstein is delusional, but his delusion is at first confined to one specific aspect of his life: he is convinced that his wife Rema has been replaced by a double, who he terms a simulacrum.

As Liebenstein sets out to “find” his wife in a very roundabout manner, we learn how they met at the Hungarian Pastry Shop in Upper Manhattan shortly after Rema arrived in the U.S. from Argentina. We also learn that she is now a translator at the same hospital where Liebenstein works and we are told about one of Liebenstein’s patients, Harvey, who is convinced he is a secret agent of the Royal Academy of Meteorology. The Academy, he believes, is able to manipulate weather and must act against mysterious forces that would use meteorological phenomena for their own purposes.

While treating Harvey, at Rema’s suggestion, Liebenstein decided to play along with Harvey’s version of the world and pretend to be an agent of the Academy as well, a higher-ranking one passing orders along. To make the story convincing, Liebenstein and Rema chose the name of a scientist at the Royal Academy, Tzvi Gal-Chen, who was supposedly issuing Harvey instructions through his therapist. The ruse works and Liebenstein is able to keep Harvey from leaving town without warning by telling him that his assignment is to monitor the New York weather. But now, just hours before the simulacrum appears, he has gone missing. As Liebenstein ponders the meaning of Rema’s doppleganger and how he can find the real Rema, he becomes increasingly obsessed with Tzvi Gal-Chen, believing that his meteorological publications contain instructions that will lead him to Rema. As Liebenstein becomes more and more part of the world Harvey has constructed, the reader must ask, what is the distance between patient and healer?

A friend noted that the book calls into question everyone’s perceptions of reality, and in a way that’s true. For example, Rema and her mother have different opinions of what happened to Rema’s father, both plausible, and neither woman seems delusional. Perhaps one of them is in denial, or perhaps they really don’t know. Later, Rema’s overheard telephone conversation reveals her perception of her husband, which differs from her mother’s and probably his own.

Galchen, herself a psychiatrist, writes with an ease and an eye for detail that draw the reader in. While the focus of the story is narrow and there are only a handful of characters, the writing is playful and smart. The reader delights in finding clues as to Liebenstein’s behavior and personality and gaining insight into his character. And while we become frustrated with the errant doctor, his devotion to his wife and her real feelings for him keep us reading.

I found myself exasperated and touched by Liebenstein. His dependence on Rema to ground him is apparent and he describes almost every woman he meets in comparison to Rema. He is also kindhearted in his own strange way, noting that it was wrong of him to leave the simulacrum without a word. His empathy towards her, all while refusing to accept her evidence that she is, in fact, the real Rema, is heartbreaking. Galchen’s prose expresses his longing: “Her voice in the dark, so familiar—is was almost as if Rema was actually there with me, in the absence of luminosity, and maybe she really was there, paying me a visitation.” Seeking Rema has become a kind of holy quest.

Atmospheric Disturbances ends without resolving the questions it raises about Liebenstein’s sanity, Harvey’s strange reappearance, or the existence of Tzvi Gal-Chen. In another novel this might be unsettling, but in this case the beauty of the prose offers the completion that is lacking in the plot. A beautifully written, original debut.

Review by Karen Duda

[Chris Dietzel · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are a ton of books in the "Unreliable narrator" and "disassociated protagonist" categories but I think this may be the best I've ever read. Galchen does an amazing job of following the always-conspiratorial and irrational mindset of someone clearly going through a mental breakdown, in a way that never becomes tedious or unrealistic. In many novels like this I find myself groaning at a decision a character will make because it seems forced in order to keep the plot moving, but every single thing Galchen does here feels authentic. I enjoyed Galchen's other novel, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch but found it to be almost entirely character focused, without much of an actual plot. Here, though, Galchen blends great character development into an established plot, and the result is incredibly satisfying.

Highest recommendation for anyone who likes stories with unreliable narrators.

[Molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Atmospheric Disturbances is adorably intriguing; it belongs to a tradition of the literary fantastic on the upper ranks of which we find Bruno Schulz, Leo Pertuz, Alexander Lernet-Holenia, some Nabokov, and of course, Kafka.

"Authenticity" is a concept that has haunted and tortured Jewish intellectuals (almost literally, in its political anti-Semitic and Nazi guise) for a couple of centuries. Galchen's tale of a man who is convinced his wife has been replaced by an identical changeling, an imposter, recalls the "problem" of inauthenticity as it has been pondered -- irrationally and often maliciously-- from Chamisso's Schlemihl through Freud to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Galchen's treatment turns the familiar scheme supporting discussions of authenticity inside out a few times - scheme which remains unchanged through superficial alterations of expression: the Wagernerian, the Nietzschean, the Heideggerian, the Freudian, the Lacanian, Derrida's, whether "for" or "against" Authenticity all repeat the basic associations of reality or the Real with the womb, with childhood, with place, nation, purity, naivety, the countryside, the irrational and emotional. The objective as the theme is put through its paces seems to be to expose the lost wholeness/truth/Real/Authenticity, for which a class of anti-modern intellectuals ostentatiously and ceaselessly mourned and mourns, as an illusion extruded by these discontent moderns' own alienation, and thus a kind of neurotic projection. The creation of a degraded and primitive other of Reason -- the spurious and superstitious which the scientifically rational can disdain - is here envisioned as an act of scapegoating nature and reality (and Woman) for the imperious male's own finally mystical convictions and unease in the world. Galchen is indicting the dangerously heedless lack of self-doubt and arrogance associated with scientific modernity and the Enlightenment for accusing what is (or probably is) a genuine other -- reality itself -- of its own profound estrangement, cynicism, and untruth.

The result is a meditation on bad epistemology consequent to that tragicomic predicament of living in time with which psychoanalytically inflected litfic is traditionally concerned: Galchen superimposes on a fundamentally realist/ic story, which invites psychoanalytic interpretations not only of the whole but of the proptagonist, a philosophical conte staging the authenticity/inauthenticity, reason/irrationality distinctions, in order to expose how the mutually defining pairs tangle: In the Critique of Judgement, Kant defines "fanaticism" as "the delusion of wanting to SEE something beyond all bounds of sensibility, i.e. of dreaming according to principles (raving with reason)." Atmospheric Disturbances has a protagonist who is raving with reason. Its author juggles its antimony in varied scientific and pseudo-scientific idioms (e.g. meteorology, psychoanalysis, continental philosophy). It's difficult to say if the book arrives at any favored hunch on the mysteries underlying its experiments; its point (besides entertaining, which it does) seems to be to reveal psychological, ideological, cosmological and literary (though, disappointingly, not historical and political) conditions of their appearance

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really admire this book.

I interpreted it as the telling of what happens when somebody you love changes. The narrator, rather than acknowledging that his wife had simply changed as a person, becomes convinced that she is NOT his wife. He runs away to Argentina, her country of origin, to find out the truth about her.

It's a heart-breaking story, really. Some of us (ahem) have a hard time adjusting when others change, and it can honestly drive you to the brink of insanity.

On some levels I think the book challenged the institution of marriage-- not so much as a warning about the horrors of marriage-- but as a reminder that people change and that marriage is work and you have to commit to loving someone til death do you part, etc.

It's very good, highly recommended; not summer fluff.

[Andrew]

An ambitious project from a young novelist who felt like she could channel the weird properly, and take on the ghosts of Kafka, Dostoyevsky, Saramago, Philip K. Dick, and above all else The Crying of Lot 49, lace it with references to Lacan and Freud, and call it a day. Do I applaud this ambition? Oh god, yes, and it's such a breath of fresh air in an American literary landscape that is as flat and dull and stultifying as Kansas on an August day. Does she pull it off... well, that's a different issue. It reaches for brilliance, and occasionally succeeds. While Atmospheric Disturbances, let's face it, limped across the finish line, Rivka Galchen clearly has something going on. I look forward to her career.