Atmospheric Disturbances: A Novel | Rivka Galchen

Atmospheric Disturbances: A Novel | Rivka Galchen | Tzvi is real

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Atmospheric Distur...

	Atmospheric Disturbances: A Novel Rivka Galchen Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 40 reviews view larger image
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When Dr. Leo Liebenstein?s wife disappears, she leaves behind a single, confounding clue: a woman who looks, talks, and behaves exactly like her?or almost exactly like her?and even audaciously claims to be her. While everyone else is fooled by this imposter, Leo knows better than to trust his senses in matters of the heart. Certain that the original Rema is alive and in hiding, Leo embarks 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. His investigation leads him to the enigmatic guidance of the meteorologist Dr. Tzvi Gal-Chen, the secret workings of the Royal Academy of Meteorology in their cosmic conflict with the 49 Quantum Fathers, and the unwelcome conviction that somehow he?or maybe his wife, or maybe even Harvey?lies at the center of all these unfathomables. From the streets of New York to the southernmost reaches of Patagonia, Leo?s erratic quest becomes a test of how far he is willing to take his struggle against the seemingly uncontestable truth he knows in his heart to be false. Atmospheric Disturbances is at once a moving love story, a dark comedy, a psychological thriller, and a deeply disturbing portrait of a fracturing mind. With tremendous compassion and dazzling literary sophistication, Rivka Galchen investigates the moment of crisis when you suddenly realize that the reality you insist upon is no longer one you can accept, and the person you love has become merely the person you live with. This highly inventive debut explores the mysterious nature of human relationships, and how we spend our lives trying to weather the storms of our own making.

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Excellent debut!

4.5 out of 5 stars

It's rare that a book gets starred reviews from all four major review publications. Was this book that good; does it really deserve that much attention? Yes, absolutely. I really, really loved it; so much, in fact, that I held off reading the last 20 pages or so for two days because I didn't want it to be over.

Psychoanalyst Leo Liebenstein thinks his wife Rema has disappeared. Not only that, but he believes she has been replaced by a simulcrum, someone who looks and acts (almost) exactly like her. Meanwhile, Harvey, one of Leo's mental patients (who believes he has the ability to control the weather) is also missing. Not buying in to the simulcrum's Rema-like performance, Leo goes to the ends of the earth to Buenos Aires and Patagonia to try to uncover the truth of what has happened to his wife.

I'll be the first to admit that although I enjoyed this book tremendously, it won't be to everyone's tastes. It's very quirky, very eccentric, but also intelligent and extremely funny. Much of what I found humorous in the novel was due to the fact that I went to Argentina in April, so I was able to get many of the inside jokes about dog poop in the streets, maté tea, Alpha Wh*re Rays, and many other references to Argentinian life. The author had been in South America for a year working on public health issues, so her writing comes from first hand experience in the region. There were, of course, also references to the (not at all funny) "Disappeared."

This is Rivka Galchen's first novel, and I definitely will be anxiously awaiting whatever she comes up with next. Oh, and if her literary career doesn't work out (I have no doubt that it will), she can always fall back on her MD that she received from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

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Tzvi is real

Tzvi Gal-Chen, the real one, the infamous University of Oklahoma Professor, and father of the dehyphenated author Rivka Galchen, occupied the office next to mine at OU, in the years preceding his death. The novel cleverly recycles posthumous biographical material about the real Tzvi Gal-Chen into a weird story, which is okay to read from beginning to end. But I got my money's worth from the pair of photos on page 147. What a hoot!

What would Tzvi (the real one) have thought of this story? Aside from the fact that he is in it, his daughter wrote it, and his scientific work serves as a rich source of puns, he would probably be bored with the unheroic schleppers that serve as characters in the novel. Nevertheless, the dialog among the schleppers is really quite witty. Maybe that is true in many modern novels. I wouldn't know.

Into the story, the author interjects commentary about psychiatry, current events, NYC, Argentina, and more. I found these interjections worthy to ponder. Did I mention meteorology?

For those of you suffering from the psychological effects of long-term exposure to meteorological jargon, this book may be for you. Example: doppelganger -> Dopplerganger. But you will need to read the book, and know a little bit about Doppler radar, to appreciate the great humor in that. If you notice me inappropriately grinning and giggling in meteorology seminars, it may be that "retrievals" and "ensembles" now push me over the edge.

The schleppers drink a lot of tea, play with it, wash down cookies and pastries with it. Fifteen years ago, Tzvi handed me a similarly tea-soddened story, "Enroute to Boston, 1969". I recall his daughter had won a prize with it at Norman High School. Oh, maybe it's not the tea that bothers me so much, but the seminar-style junk food that they wash down with it. Why can't these schleppers take better care of themselves? Thus only four stars.

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Decent debut, ultimately unsatisfying

The books starts out very strongly, but drags for the last three quarters. There's a few interesting questions, but they all go unanswered. Looking forward to bigger things in the future.

Ingenious but tedious

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.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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