Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen (2008)

Ugh. I've been putting off updating the blog because I didn't want to write about this book. The basic idea is that Dr. Leo Liebenstein's wife, Rema, presumably goes missing one day and a simulacrum is sent to her home in her place. This ersatz wife is exactly like Rema, with the exception of barely perceptible differences--that are only barely perceptible to Leo because we supposedly never see the "real" Rema, only the simulacrum. Leo then proceeds to "hunt" for Rema, in the loosest sense of the word. He is also disturbed by what is first a "russet" dog but is later described as a miniature greyhound (none of which are russet I believe). Leo first looks around the city, mainly just going to the coffee shop where he first stalked, er, met, Rema. Then he goes to Rema's mother in Argentina, whom he's presumably never met. Then he goes to Patagonia on "work." Right. So Leo is supposedly a trained psychologist and that is his profession but then he begins to believe the delusion of a patient, that they are super-meteorologists of sorts who control the weather. Right. And he has to Patagonia to do this.

The main problem I have here is that the ersatz wife situation doesn't seem to be the case. It seems like Leo is delusional, from page one. Even with a suspension of disbelief that a simulacrum of one's wife could show up at one's apartment, the narrator (who is unfortunately Leo) has to convince us that this is actually the case. He doesn't do this though. He only convinces us that he is crazy. From the first page, we get the idea that this may actually be his wife. That Rema is in fact herself and it is Leo who is just bonkers. So then the reader has the unpleasant feeling the whole length of the book that the end will divulge that all of this has been in the imagination of the narrator. I might have been ok with that if the author actually divulged what was wrong with Leo . . . Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, delusions, etc. But we never learn anything. We don't know if it is the real Rema, we don't know if Leo has imagined the whole thing, we don't know what might be wrong with Leo, etc. All of this is compounded by the fact that Leo is not a likable character and is not only not a reliable narrator but is a violently annoying narrator. At every turn, he's pushing you out of the book. If it weren't for my curiosity about how bad the book would be, I would have stopped reading almost immediately.