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A review by naokamiya
Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
4.0
This was a really interesting and kinda bewildering read. It obviously shares a bloodline with 20th century postmodernism in its self-referentiality and playing with reality and time, but its overall presentation is a lot less fantastical than much of the more out-there premises found in this type of fiction; instead it's about a man who is so convinced his wife has been replaced by a double that he fails to notice her existence even when she is right in front of him. As one would imagine this would lead to a narrative in which one is lead to question if it's our protagonist's own internal reality fractioning rather than the external. And his narration is unique, quirky without being cloying, and narcotic, employing a sense of long-winded numbness that really added a lot of flavor to his character and an understanding of how this kind of person could become convinced of something so insane. Add real-life intrigue from Galchen's family history and there's a really playful, entertaining, and oftentimes touching little novel here.
I really like what this says in regards to relationships and the internal [and external] armors we build up throughout them, especially long-running ones. How much do you think you know a person? Do you really ever know them? When becomes the point where "not knowing" goes to "knowing" for anyone but yourself [if we can assume one can even know themselves, which, it appears, Leo himself is constantly grappling with]? Sometimes we can miss [or misinterpret] what is so clearly there that our view of a person we've constructed may be of an entirely different breed than the reality itself. By presumably detailing an elaborate construction of conspiracies to explain his wife's "disappearance", Leo attempts to make sense of these questions yet reveals only that he's obfuscating himself away from the truth desperately. All this could be solved with communication but in the case of a person like Leo, who is so deeply within himself that he's unable to see the anything but his own convictions and preconceived notions of reality, that it's not so easy an undertaking.
I really ended up enjoying this; I wasn't sure what to think of it at first, as it kinda presents itself as a Borgesian psychological labyrinth but much less viscerally stimulating than something with Borges or say Pynchon's vast scopes on reality, but that's very much the point of the book, as this is from a point of view that's entirely internalized and singular. This is a very promising debut and this is the kind of book I can imagine myself thinking about down the line and enjoying it even more as I mull it over. Definitely going to peep more Galchen after this.
"Sometimes it terrifies me, when I sense the exponenting mass of human lives - of unlabeled evidence of mysteries undiscerned - about which I know nothing."
I really like what this says in regards to relationships and the internal [and external] armors we build up throughout them, especially long-running ones. How much do you think you know a person? Do you really ever know them? When becomes the point where "not knowing" goes to "knowing" for anyone but yourself [if we can assume one can even know themselves, which, it appears, Leo himself is constantly grappling with]? Sometimes we can miss [or misinterpret] what is so clearly there that our view of a person we've constructed may be of an entirely different breed than the reality itself. By presumably detailing an elaborate construction of conspiracies to explain his wife's "disappearance", Leo attempts to make sense of these questions yet reveals only that he's obfuscating himself away from the truth desperately. All this could be solved with communication but in the case of a person like Leo, who is so deeply within himself that he's unable to see the anything but his own convictions and preconceived notions of reality, that it's not so easy an undertaking.
I really ended up enjoying this; I wasn't sure what to think of it at first, as it kinda presents itself as a Borgesian psychological labyrinth but much less viscerally stimulating than something with Borges or say Pynchon's vast scopes on reality, but that's very much the point of the book, as this is from a point of view that's entirely internalized and singular. This is a very promising debut and this is the kind of book I can imagine myself thinking about down the line and enjoying it even more as I mull it over. Definitely going to peep more Galchen after this.
"Sometimes it terrifies me, when I sense the exponenting mass of human lives - of unlabeled evidence of mysteries undiscerned - about which I know nothing."