Atmospheric Disturbances
By Rivka Galchen
(Picador, Paperback, 9780312428433, 256pp.)
Publication Date: April 28, 2009
Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook, Hardcover, Hardcover, Audio Cassette, Compact Disc, Audio Cassette, Compact Disc, MP3 CD
Categories: Literary, Psychological
 |     |
Selected by Indie Booksellers for the July 2008 Indie NotablesA New York Times Notable Book of the Year
A Salon.com Top Ten Book of the Year
A Plain Dealer (Cleveland) Best Book of the Year
A Slate Best Book of the Year
When Dr. Leo Liebenstein's wife disappears, she leaves behind a single confounding clue: a woman who looks, talks, and behaves exactly like her. A simulatcrum. But Leo is not fooled, and he knows better than to trust his senses in matters of the heart. Certain that the real Rema is alive and in hiding, he embarks on a quixotic journey to reclaim her. With the help of his psychiatric patient Harvey--who believes himself to be a secret agent able to conrtol the weather--his investigation leads him from the streets of New York City to the southernmost reaches of Patagonia, in search of the woman he loves. Atmospheric Disturbances is a "witty, tender, and conceptually dazzling" (Booklist) novel about the mysterious nature of human relationships.
RIVKA GALCHEN recieved her MD from the Mount Sinai Shool of Medicine, having spent a year in South America working on public health issues. Galchen recently completed her MFA at Columbia University, where she was a Robert Bingham Fellow. Her essay on the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics was published in The Believer, and she is the recipient of a 2006 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. Galchen lives in New York City. This is her first novel.
"A relentless exploration of how a man could fail to see clearly the woman he loves . . . [A novel] that knows how to move from the comic to the painful . . . Galchen has a knack for taking a thread and fraying it, so that a sentence never quite ends up where you expect."--James Wood, The New Yorker
"At once mournful and playful . . . [a] droll, exquisite first novel."--Laura Miller, Salon.com
"There are passages so achingly beautiful in Galchen's strange puzzle of a book--about love, resilience, and perception."--Jennifer Reese, Entertainment Weekly (Grade A)
"A dense, fractally complex first novel by the conspicuously talented Rivka Galchen."--Lev Grossman, Time
"Galchen's dark and comical mystery is a clever take on the ways love, longing and overanalysis can drive you absolutely nuts."--Marie Claire
"Genuinely suspenseful . . . Ms. Galchen is a writer to be watched."--The Economist
 |
1Q84 Haruki Murakami Knopf |
 |
The Marriage Plot Jeffrey Eugenides Farrar, Straus, and Giroux |
 |
The Sense of an Ending Julian Barnes Knopf |
 |
Death Comes to Pemberley PD James Knopf |
