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If anyone
ever wondered how the paranoid sensibilities of Thomas Pynchon
would read with a woman's touch, they need look no further
than Rivka Galchen's gloriously twisted and touching Atmospheric
Disturbances.
Like
The Crying of Lot 49 turned on its head, Atmospheric
Disturbances centers on psychiatrist Leo Liebenstein's
search for his "real" wife, Rema, whom he believes has been
replaced by a doppelgänger who looks, sounds, and acts
identical to his wife, save for one tiny habit: She drinks
her tea too quickly. Leo connects Rema's disappearance with
the disappearance of one of his patients, Harvey, who believes
he controls the weather.
Some
months before his disappearance, Rema had convinced the self-proclaimed
truth-freak Leo to lie to Harvey and say that he was in contact
with a member of the Royal Academy of Meteorology, the society
that Harvey claims to get messages from via the New York
Post's Page Six. The purpose of the duplicity was to keep
Harvey at home—he would go missing very often, having
gotten instructions to effect weather patterns in far-off
locales. When Rema is replaced, Leo starts to believe that
she may have been abducted by the 49 Quantum Fathers, the
nemeses of the Royal Academy of Meteorology, the group that
Harvey believes abducted his father.
For all
the mystery and duplicity, Atmospheric Disturbances
is about love and how subjective observation can change people's
views of those they love.
The detailing
and cataloging of every moment Leo spends looking for Rema
is downright Proustian. Nothing gets by Leo's scrutiny, although
Leo never really gets what he's scrutinizing, forcing the
reader also to begin cataloging. For example, at various points
Leo refers to a model storm chart as reminding him of "looking
at a topographical map of a landscape I knew only from close
up," looking like a fingerprint, and later like "a lonely
man, in an alien landscape." In the same way, Leo also begins
to reinterpret all the ways that the replacement Rema differs
from the old Rema, but readers never know if she is really
different, or this is just his perception of her. But Leo,
in this first person narrative, is blind to his changes in
perception, just as he is blind to all the lies he easily
tells along the way despite his pathological aversion to lying.
Leo is not so much an unreliable narrator as he is, possibly,
an insane narrator. The assumption is that he is not lying
on purpose, since he's so obsessed with the truth. Eventually,
Leo begins to believe that Harvey's delusions are real, and
the reader has no way to tell whether they are real or real
only in the narrator's mind.
Objective
and subjective reality play a big part in Atmospheric Disturbances.
In order to find clues as to Rema's whereabouts, Leo begins
reading meteorological papers, which center on topics like
the red shift, the Doppler effect, and the wind chill factor,
all of which rely on the observer's position to provide data.
As the story progresses, it becomes clear that Leo begins
to believe that his subjective views are universal truths,
never realizing that his "objective" reality changes depending
on his position.
Making
an unreliable narrator appear sincere is a neat trick that
Galchen does with ease. Leo is a very sympathetic character,
despite his delusions and prevarications. His deep love for
his wife is part of his appeal. Because of this, he begins
to see all women as being Rema-esque, from her mother to a
waitress. When asked to describe how Rema is wearing her hair
these days, he goes on for a long paragraph:
It's
very tidy. And a beautiful color. Blonde like the inside
of corn. [She] holds it in a wide clip. And it's long
and trim, and in the summer she pins the flyaway hairs
back with neat little parallel hairpins that are a natural
color instead of just plain black. But she still gets
these pretty little loose strands; they get kind of extra
bleachy blonde-ish and wavy in the summertime. I think
naturally, or maybe she does that on purpose.
When
the Riva-replacement begins sobbing about his coldness and
crazy beliefs and his only response is "Aren't you tired?"
the reader may sigh with sadness. The Doppler effect has rendered
Riva unrecognizable to Leo.
Galchen
gently holds readers' hand throughout, making the readers
feel that they are gaining insight to the characters and plot
on their own. She makes the reader feel smart by subtly telegraphing
important points and allowing them to reach the conclusions
that Leo should be reaching but isn't. For example, as soon
as Leo brings up the term doppelgänger to describe
the replacement Rema and soon after refers to the use of Doppler
radar in weather forecasting, Galchen makes sure that readers
know that Leo will equate the two even before Leo knows.
Galchen
also encourages readers to get emotionally involved in this
bizarre situation. Despite the fact that readers never really
know what is happening to Leo and Rema, the two characters
are so likeable that there is an intense desire for things
to work out for them. The book is smart, but Galchen uses
her knowledge to bring things to the book that add to the
story rather than distract. Atmospheric Disturbances
is one of those rare books that will stretch brains and break
hearts at the same time.
(June,
2008)
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