Atmospheric Disturbances

Adopting the philoso-speak of Jean Baudrillard, New York novelist Rivka Galchen opens Atmospheric Disturbances with the observation that Rema, the narrator's beautiful young Argentinian wife, has been replaced with a simulacrum. The braininess doesn't stop there as Galchen incorporates the Doppler effect into a complex metaphor about relationships, sanity, and whether the two ever meet. Metaphors like these, which attempt to parse human psychology with logic, are the defining feature of Rema's husband, 51-year-old shrink Leo Liebenstein. To chip away at the mystery of Rema's doppelganger, Liebenstein takes off for Rema's hometown of Buenos Aires, boards at the home of her estranged mother, and pretends to be a friend of her husband—i.e. himself. All the while he maintains to his psychiatric patient Harvey—who has also turned up in Buenos Aires and believes he can control the weather—that he is a secret agent on a mission assigned him by a meteorology society. Galchen spins Atmospheric Disturbances with a good dose of playfulness grounded by a soft undercurrent of tragedy, and though at times the plot lags, she provides a uniquely un-sentimental, conceptually fascinating portrait of love—or something like it.