Atmospheric Disturbances: A Novel

I found this book somewhat slow going at first, but finished it quite rapidly when I picked it up again after a longish hiatus. Fair warning: If you prefer straightforward narratives (not to mention a narrator whose grasp of reality is not in question), the off-kilter beauty and complexity of Rivka Galchen's first novel will not appeal to you. What would you miss? Some very lovely writing and some darkly humorous insights into the hall of mirrors that presents itself to us when we take a closer look at our relationships with people around us (even, perhaps especially, those relationships we presume to be our most intimate).

Well that was quite odd. The basic premise of the book was well-done: a psychiatrist's descent into psychosis. Here Dr. Galchen's medical background really shines from the accuracy with which she portrays her protagonist's failed reality checking and lack of insight, to the subtle historic clues that suggest a schizophreniform personality (excessive paranoia, overvalued ideas), Galchen parades nearly every possible positive psychotic symptom. Leo experiences thought insertion, overvalued ideas, pressure speech with train of thought patterns, hallucinosis, and delusions of every flavor. It's all done organically, realistically and from a first person perspective. While unique and originally fun as a concept, once Leo finishes his descent show more into psychosis, the plot doesn't really go anywhere, and I found the last 25% or so of the book dragged.

What really struck me though, almost immediately, was the inclusion of Tzvi Gal-Chen as a character. "How odd, Gal-Chen, that sounds familiar," I thought, then remembered that the book was by Rivka Galchen. I then checked the acknowledgements, yup, she includes Tzvi in there. A quick google search revealed that Tzvi Gal-Chen is Rivka's (deceased) father (But no information about the surname spelling discrepancy). The pictures of him in the book, citations of his research and figures from his papers are all real, as is the description of him and his computer programmer wife living in Oklahoma with their two kids (Google has no opinion as to whether Rivka and her brother were indeed spoiled, bad at soccer, and good at math). In an interview, Rivka mentioned that readers rarely notice but for her the inclusion of her father is the largest part of the book. Well, I noticed and for me, it loomed large, as you can tell by the amount of googling it provoked. It's just such a strange decision: why include one's dead father in an otherwise non-autobiographical novel, as the hallucination of the psychotic protagonist? To make the reader feel like they're going crazy and overvaluing ideas? To invoke a Freudian feel wherein the reader sits around asking "but what does she mean by her dead father?" It's so very weird and it completely broke my ability to otherwise concentrate on the novel at all.

What I did appreciate even more knowing that Rivka grew up with a meteorologist for a father was her obvious love of language. It was clear that she had been rolling around words and turns of phrase in her head for a long time, taking them in and out of context, so when she got the chance to explore every possible meaning of every phrase, she really made the technical language sing. show less

Freely acknowledged: I probably don't get this book.

I'm not saying I don't understand the narrative, or the interaction between "atmospheres" on several different physical, emotional, and intellectual levels. But if the inciting event is metaphorical, that I'm having a difficult time finding the emotional wavelength that ties the rest of the narrative together, and if it is literal, then I'm not sure what to make of the ending.

Maybe Red Pill wore me out enough that I'm not up for more mental illness narratives yet, or maybe my hatred for novels written by men depicting mentally ill women has an analogue dislike in the opposite direction, but I didn't find anything in the novel persuasive in terms of deciphering my own brain or by show more comparison to how any of the (many) mentally ill people I've known attempt to explain themselves. show less

I picked up "Atmospheric Disturbances" after reading a piece that Rivka Galchen wrote for Harper's. She argued that Daedalus, who built Icarus's wings and successfully escaped from the maze, might be a better metaphor for science's work than his son, Icarus, who is remembered mostly for his hubris and tragic demise. I thought that this was a pretty striking idea, so I'm sorry to say that I felt a bit let down by Galchen's debut novel. Like her essay, it's inspired by science – Galchen introduces her meteorologist father as a character and has a good ear for the accidental poetry of scientific terminology. Her writing's her own, too; it's quirky and occasionally very funny. Still, this novel proves what anyone who's already sat through show more "The Butcher Boy" or read Bessie Head's "A Question of Power" already knows – novels told from the perspective of the disturbed tend to be pretty disturbing, and, in the end, sort of tedious. The metaphor that Galchen's unhinged narrator uses to describe his unraveling relationship to reality is, appropriately enough, inspired by science and, again, very clever, but I'm not sure it makes her novel any easier to read. I also might have been put off by the fact that "Atmospheric Disturbances" treads the same territory as Richard Powers's "The Echo Maker," another novel that I found interesting but also sort of dry. While I admire both Galchen and Powers's willingness to write novels that engage with current scientific theory, it's possible that I'm just too much of a Modernist to enjoy them. I still think that there's a lot left to say about the things that don't show up too easily on a CAT scan: memory, consciousness, and, as Faulkner put it, "the conflicts of the human heart." show less

Can a book have too many conceits? And if it does, is that book then rendered conceited? I pondered this often as I read this book, wondering whether I wished to psychoanalyze the book, which it seemed to desire, or if I simply wanted to read the damn thing. Did I want to think about it, or really, really think about it? And then other parts of my brain were thinking things like, Well, I can see how the author might read a technical paper on something completely unrelated to X, decide to decontextualize it and make it a springboard for fiction, in fact I can see doing that myself, but would I go through with it? Would it hold up?

Leo, the antagonizing protagonist, has decided to cope with that moment everyone in a long-term relationship show more experiences--the moment when you look at your partner and think, Who the hell is that? Actually, he decides not to cope with it, by determining that his wife has been replaced by a stranger, rather than accepting that there are things he doesn't and can't know about her. Because, I guess, he's special; I mean, that's really a pompous way to look at things. (Leo so pompous, he wouldn't mind being called pompous. Frankly, if I were his wife, I might try to find a way out from under his overbearing clutches myself, but I wouldn't put another person in as a substitute.)

Every other damn person is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, or patient in this book. Why should the book be any different? Well, it's a book. And it's got a lot of things going on, as Leo tries to find his "real" wife. Maybe she did get replaced--I'm just giving you my grudging reading of the book. And ultimately it is, maybe a little, conceited. show less

Surreal, confusing, draining, stilted, hyperreality, posturing, self-consciously clever and ultimately unsatisfying. These are just some of the words that immediately come to mind as I sit here trying to articulate my feelings about this book. For a different reader, one who enjoys postmodernism or post-postmodernism, perhaps these words would add up to a more enjoyable reading experience than they did for me.

Superficially, the novel opens with psychiatrist Leo Liebenstein's assertion that his wife has been replaced with a simulacum, one who is so close to the original that only the most astute (his) observation could prove otherwise. Ostensibly, the reader is supposed to be clever enough to follow and accept his arguments as truth as show more well. And so Leo, after failing to convince this doppelganger to admit to her complicity in his real wife's disappearance, takes off on a mission to find the real Rema. His peripatetic journeyings are driven by signs he finds in the scientific (mind numbingly so) writings of meteorologist Tzvi Gal-Chen and by his disappeared pyschiatric patient Harvey, who believes that he controls the weather in his role as a secret agent.

The secondary characters are essentially incidental to the story, even Rema herself, as Leo's thoughts and feelings reign supreme here, even if the reader has determined that he is suffering from a mental illness (Capgras Syndrome for anyone curious enough to research it). Is this an appropriate conclusion on this reader's part? I can't say for certain but it made Leo slightly more sympathetic to me and so I had to go with it. Because honestly, aside from feeling that the main character was fairly delusional and therefore pitiable, I wasn't engaged by the story at all. It was, quite simply, tedious reading. I understood the line blurring going on between reality and perception and the juxtaposition between the scientific and the emotional but none of this questioning within the framework of a very slight story made for an appealing read. A book which isn't immediately accessible is not necessarily bad but it isn't automatically elevated into the pantheon of worthy and complex writing either, a place to which this particular book seems to aspire too graspingly. Obviously I didn't love this book but there certainly are loads of academicians and much higher brow reviewers who think it's all that and a bag of chips so look widely at the reviews before coming to any conclusions. As for me though, I'm sticking with my assessment: "The emperor's naked." show less

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.