L

Crust Pizza wants to wish
all their friends & customers a

.-Yfidilly

p_GRef-t a /

„ Entertainment

, NiAzi;
` -

Crust Pizza + Wine Bar in Rochester Hills, it's no
secret what part of the pizza they've perfected. The
Neapolitan-style pies (i.e., handmade thin, and crunchy)
are best enfoyed with minimal topp,ngs — cheese,
ton-1- 4.::.
ncho4:es, olives, and a drizzle of olive oil.

Lot's Daughter

March
2007
, Bon
. .„, Appetit Magazine,
• ,_„„,
• •
, •- -

Debut novel is a love story,
a psychological thriller and
dark comedy rolled into one.

Adam Wilson

WINE BAR

find that the woman before him, who
looks, smells, and speaks just like his
wife Rema, is not actually his wife
Rema. He believes, instead, that she is
rom the get-go, Rivka
a simulacrum of Rema.
Galchen's small masterpiece
"It was just a feeling, that's how I
of a debut novel, Atmospheric knew. Like the moment at the end of
Disturbances: A Novel (Farrar Straus & the dream when I am sometimes able
Giroux; $24), invites comparison with
to whisper to myself, 'I am dreaming."'
Thomas Pynchon's
Though Leo, a
The Crying of Lot
psychiatrist, has the
49 — the cover
capacity to explain
of Galchen's book
that these kinds of
prominently fea-
feelings are "limbic
tures the number 49
system instinctual
- -
encircled in its top
responses — the
•
right-hand corner.
most superficial
ATMOSPHERIC
On the surface, at
and anachronistic
DISTURBANCES
least, the novels do
of all, like the feel-
have a lot in com-
ing a baby duck
RIVKA A
mon; Galchen (in
must have when
addition to a medi-
it responds more
cal degree, she has
strongly to a stick
an MFA and is the
painted red than to
winner of a Rona
the beak of its own
Jaffe Foundation
mother:' he cannot
Writer's Award) is
apply this logic in
A a •
not afraid to wear
order to understand
A psychiatrist's wife disappears,
her influences
the flaws in his own
leaving behind a woman who
on her sleeve (or
reasoning
looks and behaves exactly like
jacket). Both novels
Instead, he
her, fooling all but her husband.
track narrators who
embarks on a tragi-
are on futile jour-
comic quest to find
neys to unlock the secrets of what they the real Rema, a journey that takes
believe to be worldwide conspiracies.
him from New York's Upper West Side
In addition, both novels are con-
as far as Argentina (where Galchen
cerned with questions about the
spent time doing public health
nature of reality. They are also funny
research) and Patagonia.
and fiercely intellectual. But though
Mentally, he travels even further,
Galchen is indebted to Pynchon, her
outside of the celestial plane; he cor-
book is resistant to the type of criti-
responds by e-mail with Dr. Tzvi
cism garnered by works like Pynchon's Gal-Chen (also the name of Galchen's
— accusations of emotional vacancy
deceased father), a dead meteoro-
and robotic characters.
logical researcher associated with the
Atmospheric Disturbances is cer-
Royal Academy of Meteorology.
tainly cerebral, but at its core it is a
Leo becomes obsessed with Gal-
novel about feelings: loss and love. In
Chen's work, particularly his idea
this sense, the work is as much a chal-
that weather is difficult to predict
lenge to Pynchon's aesthetic as it is
because we can't objectively say what
influenced by it.
the weather is at present. For Galchen,
The novel begins on a "temperate
who spent time among psychiatrists
and stormy night" — immediately we
and psychiatric patients while study-
are asked to question the reliability of
ing medicine at Mount Sinai in New
description: How can it be both tem-
York, this true-to-life weather problem
perate and stormy?
becomes a metaphor for the subjective
Leo Liebenstein returns home to
nature of reality

JBooks.com

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o.

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October 9 0 2008