it was just a feeling

i recently finished reading atmospheric disturbances, a peculiar, existentially romantic novel written by rivka galchen. i have been itching to share this novel with you because i have never read anything quite like it; atmospheric disturbances is a little bit science fiction, a little bit heartbreaking but so totally and completely meticulously composed.

the novel is narrated by leo, a middle-aged psychiatrist who believes his young and beautiful wife, rema, has been replaced by a simulacrum. although the evidence with which leo draws this conclusion is completely absurd (the doppelganger looks, talks and acts just like rema), he is compulsively compelled by his faith in the belief that this doppelganger is not his 'real' rema. throughout the novel, leo tries to retrieve his wife by looking for clues that may or may not be buried in the work of a meteorologist by the name of tzvi gal-chen.

i don't want to give you too much of the plot because i sincerely think you should just read this novel. there are so many interesting and strange aspects to this story that it simply deserves to be read. galchen's story explores the instability of love and the common experience of trying to protect yourself from pain and heartbreak before it ever happens. it also elaborates on the odd sense of the uncanny - those moments when something deeply familiar suddenly feels so very alien and unknown. but more importantly, with passages like this, how could you not want to read it:

i don't know if i believe that our relationships with our parents establish patterns we are doomed to repeat and repeat but - i am surprised that i was not more anxious about marrying a woman who very well may have just abandoned her parents. for all i knew rema had misrepresented and cheaply blamed this beautiful mother whose only fault may have been accurately perceiving the ugly truth - even with little information - about the rude american rema had chosen to marry before she as chosen to marry me. i should at least have learned more about how it had come to be that rema had abandoned her mother, before i asked her to marry - and hopefully not abandon - me. but i saw rema prismatically, all fractured and reconstituted as if seen in the valley of an unshined silver spoon, and actually i'm glad love does that, i shouldn't complain about love, or love's perspective - distorted or no, to feel superior to it would be wrong, as if there were some better way of seeing.

seriously, go out and buy this book now. read it and let me know what you think!