Atmospheric Disturbances

Product Description
A Booklist Top Ten First Novel for 2008 and A Finalist for the New York Public Library's 2009 Young Lions Fiction Award and Winner of the 2010 Saroyan Prize

When Dr. Leo Liebenstein's wife disappears, she leaves behind a single, confounding clue: a woman who looks, talks, and behaves almost exactly like her and even audaciously claims to be her. While everyone else is fooled by this imposter, Leo knows better. Certain that his real wife is alive and in hiding, Leo embarks on a quixotic journey to reclaim his lost love. From the streets of New York to the southernmost reaches of Patagonia, Leo's quest becomes a test of how far he is willing to take his struggle against the seemingly uncontestable truth he knows in his heart to be false.
Review
''A relentless exploration of how a man could fail to see clearly the woman he loves . . . [A novel] that knows how to move from the comic to the painful . . . Galchen has a knack for taking a thread and fraying it, so that a sentence never quite ends up where you expect.''--James Wood,
The New Yorker

''There are passages so achingly beautiful in Galchen's strange puzzle of a book -- about love, resilience, and perception.''-- Jennifer Reese,
Entertainment Weekly (Grade A)

''Galchen's dark and comical mystery is a clever take on the ways love, longing and overanalysis can drive you absolutely nuts.'' --
Marie Claire

''At once mournful and playful . . . [a] droll, exquisite first novel.'' -- Laura Miller,
Salon.com

''[An] enthralling debut. . . heartbreaking and maddening. . . . Don't be surprised if this gives you a
Crying of Lot 49 nostalgia hit.'' --
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

''A dense, fractally complex first novel by the conspicuously talented Rivka Galchen.''-- Lev Grossman,
Time

''[A]n intricate puzzle powered by an urgently beating heart. . . A superb first novel.'' --
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

''Genuinely suspenseful . . . Ms. Galchen is a writer to be watched.''
The Economist

''[A]stonishing. . . This dense, brilliant novel should be much in demand.'' --
Library Journal
About the Author
RIVKA GALCHEN earned her medical degree at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and completed a residency in psychiatry and also completed her MFA at Columbia University, where she was a Robert Bingham fellow. She has published essays in
The Believer and
Scientific American, and in 2006 she was awarded a Rona Jaffe Writers Award.
Atmospheric Disturbances is her first novel.