Atmospheric Disturbances: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Rivka Galchen (Author) "Last December a woman entered my apartment who looked exactly like my wife..." (more)
Key Phrases: initial value problem, Atmospheric Disturbances, Rivka Galchen, Tzvi Gal-Chen (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, June 2008: Imagine what it might be like to realize that the person you love is, in fact, not the person you love but a doppelgänger: or, what Leo Liebenstein coolly terms a "simulacrum" of his wife Rema at the outset of Atmospheric Disturbances. David Byrne's infamous cry that "this is not my beautiful wife" seems the most likely response, but Leo's reaction to this sea change takes unpredictable and dazzlingly plotted turns in the story that follows. Leo's journey to recover the "real" Rema is nothing short of byzantine; among its many mysteries is the delightfully inscrutable Dr. Tzvi Gal-Chen, a master meteorologist who in cleverly constructed flashback sequences takes up residence in the daily rhythms of Leo and Rema's marriage and becomes as much a focus of Leo's obsession as his wife's whereabouts. (Think Vertigo but directed by Charlie Kaufman.) Make no mistake: this is dizzying debut fiction, bursting at the spine with beautifully articulated ideas about love, yes, but also--and with maddening resonance--about the private wars love forces us to wage with ourselves. Be sure to keep a pen or pencil handy: it's impossible to resist underlining prose this good. --Anne Bartholomew



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 Leo Liebenstein sets off to find his wife, Rema, who he believes has been replaced by a simulacrum.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. (June)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1 edition (May 27, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374200114
• ISBN-13: 978-0374200114
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #169,738 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No, it's not Pynchon. Yes, it's great, June 14, 2008

By	Steven K. "maven maven" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

So yeah, the coverage on this book is a little confusing. This book IS great, and it IS Murakami-esque, and it IS Austeresque, and it IS heartbreaking. It's NOT so Pynchonesque, but I understood how it casually picked up that label in the press, because it's an easy quicktag on something that plays extensively with scientific language and ideas, and it's also not utterly alien in theme from the paranoid attention to detail of a book like Crying of Lot 49. But to such different ends and with different concerns. But that's not to say that this book isn't (or even is) fantastic...it's just descriptive kind of, without value judgment.

But when it does come to value judgment, the judgment that belongs here is that this is something emotionally ambitious, sincere and playful at once, and sentence by sentence it's just miles better than most writing today. I felt emotionally and intellectually engaged, which is basically what I seek out as a reader. The narrator's ways of thinking, and of seeing the world, will not win him citizenship awards, but will be achingly familiar to anyone who has ever honestly introspected.

Also, what I guess was most interesting to me, and most happily obscured, is the odd ways in which the meteorologist Tzvi Gal-Chen comes into the narrative; this, weirdly, seemed the emotional core of the book to me, though I wouldn't want to spoil things by explaining why I felt this way.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I didn't get it., November 30, 2008

By	C.A. Wulff "Ariel" (Boston Township, OH USA) - See all my reviews

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.

C.A.Wulff - author of Born Without a Tail

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Ingenious but tedious, October 18, 2008

By	Anna Karenina (Dallas, TX United States) - See all my reviews

As much as this book is ingenious, clever, unique, poetic, and philosophical, I regret to say that it's tedious. There is simply no momentum, after the first 25 pages. The relationships have no plausibility. There is not enough plot, not enough real life. The main character does not "read" believably as a middle aged man. His mental life does not hang together as a genuine possibility. Events don't seem real. While reading I keep feeling like I was counting grains of sand, or sifting through cookie crumbs, or maybe sinking in quick sand. Although the amusing, clever gems kept coming, the novel didn't create a palpable world I could enter into.