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| Atmospheric Disturbances: A Novel | 
| Author: Rivka Galchen
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
Buy New: $13.00
You Save: $11.00 (46%)
New (36) from $13.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  38 reviews
Sales Rank: 17914
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.1
ISBN: 0374200114
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780374200114
ASIN: 0374200114
Publication Date: May 27, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new book. Same day shipping.
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| 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
Product Description
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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| Customer Reviews: Read 33 more reviews...
 Save Your Money! Book's a loser! October 5, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Prolific reader and writer, I tossed this book in disgust after suffering to page 145. I bought it when I read the publisher's advertisement. Whoa, publisher, what were you smoking the day you harvested this little green potato? The author is obviously intelligent and literate, but not a story teller. Had she told Constant Reader in the foreward that her principal suffers from Capgrass Syndrome where the mentally sick man believes someone else is inhabiting the body of a person he knows well, we could more easily have gotten into his confusion. Even so, the story wanders, loose ends are not tied up and it is generally so frustrating to read, my advice would be this: If you bought it, before you read it, toss it into the dustbin. Use it for a doorstop. Do anything but waste your valuable time trying to decipher a story - there ain't one! Publisher: send this lady to a story writing class, so she can learn to use her amazing vocabulary in a manner which will provide many sheckles to you and her, should she succeed! Darlene White
 Tzvi is real September 14, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
 Decent debut, ultimately unsatisfying August 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
Disturbances: Inside and Out August 29, 2008
Atmospheric Disturbances, a first novel by Rivka Galchen, is filled with fun and promise. Her narrator is a psychiatrist named Leo, who is certain that the woman who came home one day was not his wife but rather a perfect, or near perfect, simulacrum. It's a promising start for readers who enjoy the bizarre. Leo sets out in search of his true wife and of a patient who has also disappeared. The patient had seemed to have delusions about working for the Royal Academy of Meteorology on a secret project with military implications. A rival group known as the 49 is out to foil things. Have they kidnapped his wife?
As he proceeds on his quest, which takes him to Argentina, Leo consistently psychoanalyzes himself and others in an effort to remain convinced of his own sanity, and Galchen seems to have a firm grasp of the shop talk. But is he really mad, or are all the strange happenings not just in his mind? For much of the novel we tend to opt for the former explanation, but then things start to confirm his "delusions."
Of course I won't reveal the ending, but I will offer a reservation. The reader has some work to do to gain a clear picture of how this narrator's mind works and/or how his world turns. At times we wade so far into his brooding that we need hip boots, and we might wonder if it will be worth the effort. And yet, in its best moments, the novel insinuates itself into the tradition of the great writers of distorted realities such Franz Kafak and Thomas Pynchon, and in fact Galchen's 49 is probably an homage to Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49.
If Atmospheric Disturbances sounds like your thing, you might also try The Testing of Luther Albright by MacKensie Bezos. Her protagonist is not as odd as Galchen's, but Luther also has a few screws that need tightening. This is a beautifully crafted psychological study in which everything in the external world correlates with cracks and stresses in Luther's mind. Is the dam he designed defective? Did he err when installing the plumbing in his house? For a controlling person like Luther Albright, these issues are symbolic of flaws in his relationships, or in his perceptions of them. Tension builds slowly, and the inner demons begin to emerge like cracks in a damn, or in the living room plaster.
Both of these are fine first novels.
 I wished I had liked it August 28, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
As a writer myself, I just can't enjoy writing mean reviews - I'm happy for Galchen that others like this book. I asked for it for my birthday this month, because I read so much contemporary fiction, I have loved other books on Capgras Syndrome (like Richard Powers's, which is amazing), and because I enjoy the challenge of complex chronologies. Unfortunately I was just lost. What should have been a fun and engaging puzzle turned out to make me feel indifferent, because I felt things did not hang together in an internally coherent way. The problem with recording fictional madness is that there still has to be some coherence for the reader! Galchen is smart, with creativity to burn. Cool ideas from science are included. But overall, I just couldn't get into it.
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Wildlife, nature and the Environment
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