It may be that friendship is nourished on observation and conversation, but love is born from and nourished on silent interpretation…The beloved expresses a possible world unknown to us…that must be deciphered.
That is Gilles Deleuze and it is the front quotation in the new novel Atmospheric Disturbances, by the very beautiful Rivka Galchen. The key premise of this novel is that a 51-year-old psychiatrist suddenly believes that his wife has been replaced with an exact look-alike; he refers to her as the Simulacrum. I read it straight through. Here is an interview with the author.
There is a real-life medical condition that fits this description: Capgras delusion
yes, i guess a female writer can’t be properly evaluated unless we know whether or not she’s hot. i hope you’ll be sharing similar details about how dashing and handsome all your favorite male authors are. grrr.
Atmospheric Disturbances is definitely one of the better unreliable narrator stories out there. The second half in particular seems to employ subtle shifts in tone and style to display Leo’s changing mental state. I am a fan.
It’ll be interesting to see what Galchen does in her nextnovel. She seems to have pulled out all of her overt personal interests (psychology, South America, her father, Hungarian pastries…) for this one. It’s a total creative writing class trick, but for once it doesn’t come off as such.
Is this the same basic motivating story behind The Changeling?
New technology is always given us surprising and life way changing.
It is enlightening!
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