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Aug 07, 2008

Lynn rated it:

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 somethin More...

2 comments like (17 people liked it)

Aug 11, 2008

RandomAnthony rated it:

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 More...

8 comments like (4 people liked it)

Mar 17, 2010

oriana rated it:

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 More...

7 comments like (6 people liked it)

May 22, 2008

M. rated it:

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, More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jan 01, 2009

Yulia rated it:

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 bee More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Jul 26, 2008

Michael rated it:

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 bo More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 06, 2008

Jamie rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jun 22, 2008

Alexandra rated it:

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 Pync More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 27, 2008

Hannah rated it:

Dear Rivka Galchen,
I won't pretend that the pony of my heart was not distracted from your book by the suicide of David Foster Wallace. Or that I haven't, just like I'm guessing 700 million people right now, picked up Infinite Jest again.

Nonetheless, Rivka, I am sorry to say that in the end you seemed to me more similar to Marisha Pessl than it would be seemly to say.

Enh.

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jan 29, 2012

James rated it:

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 More...

4 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 16, 2010

Drucifer rated it:

Uh, could've been worse I guess. The thing that bothers me about unreliable narrators is the way writers sometimes use them as cop-outs. Like, take Leo, for example. Yes, he's nuts, that's great. I love nuts people. The only problem is his narrative suffers from the same kind of (ILL)logic. The conclusions he comes to end up driving the narrative, but none of those conclusions make sense, which means we end up following Leo without really knowing why, except that in his brain everything makes se More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 30, 2008

Cayr rated it:

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. Wh More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 08, 2008

Rebecca rated it:

I'm nearly done, but I have to say that if this book weren't getting such rave reviews I probably would have given up by now. :( More when I've finished.

Ok, I finished it, but the fact that it's taken me over a week to get around to reviewing it says something about the lackluster impression it made on me. I admit, I was intrigued by the suggestion in the NYT review (I think it was this one) that this novel was a rare example of a metaphysical/intellectual novel-of-ideas by a More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 08, 2008

Katie rated it:

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. More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 22, 2008

Nick rated it:

Such a unique debut. The ultimate example of the unreliable narrator. On the surface it's about a man who may or may not be going crazy, who may or may not be receiving instructions on how to live his life and how to look for his lost wife through years old meteorological journal entries and the New York Post. But it also explores Doppleganger phenomena, themes of love and loss, what it is to truly 'know' someone, to truly 'know' yourself, how we perceive/receieve information and different ways More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 13, 2008

Tom rated it:

I slogged through this book on the basis of some good reviews. And then when I was ready to quit, I willed myself through the rest just to find out the answer to the mystery. Ha ha, no answer.

This doesn't qualify as a spoiler since there isn't really an answer, but I'm pretty sure the narrator had a stroke and is suffering from a mental condition that makes for great non-fiction by Oliver Sacks, but does not make for great fiction by a different doctor. I was excited to read a book More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 30, 2011

Sasha added it

It has an intriguing premise–the novel begins with "Last December a woman entered my apartment who looked exactly like my wife": psychiatrist Leo Liebenstein just knows that his wife Rema isn’t his wife Rema, but an “impostor,” a “simulacrum,” an “ersatz wife.” It’s a beginning that gave me goosebumps, something told me this would be a great read. The language was wonderful, detailed, disarmingly skewed–the narrator has a way of looking at something so normal in a completely different More...

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Jun 09, 2011

Jeruen rated it:

What if one night, you come back to your house and find that a doppelganger has taken over the life of your wife? What if there is this woman, who looks like your wife, smells like your wife, talks like your wife, sounds like your wife, is in your house, and yet you are fully convinced that that is an impostor, and your wife was taken away by some unknown force, some unknown entity, and replaced with this doppelganger?

That is the premise that this debut novel of author Rivka Galchen pr More...

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Jun 07, 2011

Tomiko rated it:

The first sentence of this novel is awesome: "Last December, a woman entered my apartment who looked exactly like my wife." The rest of the story deals with this predicament; the clearly delusional protagonist spends the entire novel (which, in my opinion, is about 75 pages too long) rationalizing and deliberating. The main character, Leo, is a psychiatrist who is constantly analyzing others, and he frequently dismisses these analyses when they apply to him.

This, in a way, i More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 04, 2011

christa rated it:

Leo Liebenstein, a middle-aged psychiatrist, believes that his young Argentine wife Rema has been replaced by a doppelganger. She looks like his wife. She's dressed like his wife. She's wearing his wife's shampoo. But it isn't her, he's convinced, and the fact that the former dog-hater has picked up a stray and brought it into their home is a clue in his favor.He refers to her as a simulcrum.

Rivka Galchen is no joke. For my $5.99, the best short story from the New Yorker's 20 Under 40 More...

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Jan 22, 2011

Anna rated it:

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 els More...

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Dec 17, 2009

Tyler rated it:

I posted this on a blog in October, 2008. It's pretty wordy.

“Last December a woman entered my apartment who looked exactly like my wife.”

So begins the short-story-seamstress Rivka Galchen’s debut novel. “Atmospheric Disturbances” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008) tells the story of Dr. Leo Liebenstein, a New York psychiatrist whose wife has disappeared and been replaced by a double, sending him on a quest to find her and a missing patient, Harvey, who believes hi More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 11, 2009

Cherry rated it:

Atmospheric Disturbances is a beautiful, sprawling maze of a book. It is a look at the fracturing mind of Leo, a clinical psychologist, as he tries to uncover the truth of the identical simulacrum that walked in the door one day instead of his wife. His search moves from Toronto to Argentina, sweeping in Harvey, one of Leo's patients. Harvey believes he is a secret agent of the Royal Academy of Meteorology, carrying out secret missions passed to him first through the newspapers, and then thro More...

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Jul 25, 2009

Elevate Difference rated it:

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 stron More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 15, 2009

AJ marked it as to-read

NPR Recommendation:
When Dr. Leo Liebenstein's wife, Rema, comes through the door of their apartment carrying a little dog, he knows instantly that she's an impostor. First of all, Rema doesn't like dogs. And secondly, though this simulacrum has the same "hayfeverishly fresh scent ... same tucking behind ears of dyed cornsilk blond hair," and does a perfect imitation of Rema's Argentine accent with "halos around the vowels," he's certain she's not his Rema. Either Leo' More...

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May 03, 2009

liz rated it:

Before starting reading, I was amused to note an endorsement from Francisco Goldman and pleased to note one from Vendela Vida as the first two on the back of the book. Well, mostly, this novel made me sad, and occasionally confused me with complex meteorological references.

It's about a psychiatrist who, one day, suddenly becomes convinced that his wife has been replaced by an exact replica of herself. In trying to figure out what may have happened to his "real" wife, he get More...

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Jun 05, 2009

Dwhren rated it:

I picked up this book because it was showing up on all kinds of the best books of the year lists at the end of last year. Apparently all these critics and I do not share the same taste in books. This it seems is the year for me to wind up reading books that drive me insane with an incomprehensible plot that doesn't even bother to tie up in the end. I feel like I should have been reading this for one of my book clubs because it seems like we've had a knack for picking those, however in this ca More...

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Sep 22, 2011

Jessica rated it:

This book came highly recommended to me by a friend but I couldn't make it past page 50 (I'm getting more picky in my old age - I used to give things the 100-page-test, I've recently halved that, thinking that if that's what agents need to read to know if a book will work, it's a good enough test for me too). By page 50, there were no compelling characters, no compelling setting, very little dialogue, and no conflict other than one that was highly-abstract-conceptual and yet too obvious. It's More...

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Aug 20, 2010

Daveski rated it:

I found this author through a short story published in the New Yorker, so perhaps I should not be surprised that it starts in Manhattan and is fairly pretentious. Galchen is a clever, witty, and highly skilled writer, but in this novel she spends so much time being clever and witty that she forgets to tell a good story or develop any emotions.

The plot basically follows a man's descent into insanity (some unnamed form of schizophrenia) from his point of view. The author does a fanta More...

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Mar 23, 2009

Amy rated it:

I had read reviews of this quite awhile ago, and I had a vague memory of it sounding a bit too pretentious and precocious. Much to my surprise, then, I found the story and characters to be oddly endearing. The novel is a first-person narrative by a psychologist who is clearly starting to succumb to some sort of mental illness. He believes his wife has been replaced by an imposter and, over time, that he is part of a meteorological society's secret initiative to combat weather control by an un More...

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