Scan barcode
A review by bluestraveler
Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
4.0
A post-modern psychological novel, not quite exciting enough to call a thriller, but a worthy read nonetheless. One day a clinical psychiatrist wakes up to discover his wife has been replaced with a doppelganger (or has she?) and he ends up on a hemisphere-crossing journey in the hopes of figuring out a mystery.
Thematically built around the loss of parents (Rema, the doppelganger wife) lost her father in her youth, according to her he walked out on her and her mother, whilst her mother claims he is a Desaparecido, the book never stating which is true. Leo, the husband and psychiatrist, lost a father at some point in his youth (or maybe never had one, I do not remember exactly) and the book makes it clear his analytic mind has made an effort not to confront these emotions. And hanging over the entire book is the Author's own father, Tzvi Gal-chen, who is a character in the story, and also a loved one that Rivka lost in her childhood. (The book includes several, presumably real, pictures of their family)
The journey taken on the book begins in New York City, before traveling to Buenos Aires and later the extreme southern end of Argentina, as it builds towards not necessarily a climax, but certainly an ending. But most of the journey is spent in the mind of Leo, a scientific man to the extreme, who never doubts his own sanity, even as he begins to believe in an elaborate conspiracy of weather systems and doppelgangers, one that he may have invented entirely on his own. Or maybe not.
Thematically built around the loss of parents (Rema, the doppelganger wife) lost her father in her youth, according to her he walked out on her and her mother, whilst her mother claims he is a Desaparecido, the book never stating which is true. Leo, the husband and psychiatrist, lost a father at some point in his youth (or maybe never had one, I do not remember exactly) and the book makes it clear his analytic mind has made an effort not to confront these emotions. And hanging over the entire book is the Author's own father, Tzvi Gal-chen, who is a character in the story, and also a loved one that Rivka lost in her childhood. (The book includes several, presumably real, pictures of their family)
The journey taken on the book begins in New York City, before traveling to Buenos Aires and later the extreme southern end of Argentina, as it builds towards not necessarily a climax, but certainly an ending. But most of the journey is spent in the mind of Leo, a scientific man to the extreme, who never doubts his own sanity, even as he begins to believe in an elaborate conspiracy of weather systems and doppelgangers, one that he may have invented entirely on his own. Or maybe not.