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A review by jcwills11
Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
1.0
I wanted to like this book, I really did. If you told me you had a book featuring an identity crisis and an ontological/epistemological/metaphysical mystery, and that much of the action takes place in Argentina, I would assume that book was destined for my own personal pantheon of favorites.
But Galchen's characters have no depth; only the narrator (Leo) gets any semblance of a personality, and that is of the annoying, possibly delusional analyst. The settings are white-washed; no matter how many times Leo visits a cafe, you have no idea what it looks like. I have no objection to sparse writing - consider me a fan of Hemingway, McCarthy and so forth - but there is nothing in Galchen's world for the reader to hold on to. As it is the book slides by like so much idle chatter.
But Galchen's characters have no depth; only the narrator (Leo) gets any semblance of a personality, and that is of the annoying, possibly delusional analyst. The settings are white-washed; no matter how many times Leo visits a cafe, you have no idea what it looks like. I have no objection to sparse writing - consider me a fan of Hemingway, McCarthy and so forth - but there is nothing in Galchen's world for the reader to hold on to. As it is the book slides by like so much idle chatter.