Atmospheric Disturbances

Well that was quite odd. The basic premise of the book was well-done: a psychiatrist's descent into psychosis. Here Dr. Galchen's medical background really shines from the accuracy with which she portrays her protagonist's failed reality checking and lack of insight, to the subtle historic clues that suggest a schizophreniform personality (excessive paranoia, overvalued ideas), Galchen parades nearly every possible positive psychotic symptom. Leo experiences thought insertion, overvalued ideas, pressure speech with train of thought patterns, hallucinosis, and delusions of every flavor. It's all done organically, realistically and from a first person perspective. While unique and originally fun as a concept, once Leo finishes his descent into psychosis, the plot doesn't really go anywhere, and I found the last 25% or so of the book dragged.

What really struck me though, almost immediately, was the inclusion of Tzvi Gal-Chen as a character. “How odd, Gal-Chen, that sounds familiar,” I thought, then remembered that the book was by Rivka Galchen. I then checked the acknowledgements, yup, she includes Tzvi in there. A quick google search revealed that Tzvi Gal-Chen is Rivka's (deceased) father (But no information about the surname spelling discrepancy). The pictures of him in the book, citations of his research and figures from his papers are all real, as is the description of him and his computer programmer wife living in Oklahoma with their two kids (Google has no opinion as to whether Rivka and her brother were indeed spoiled, bad at soccer, and good at math). In an interview, Rivka mentioned that readers rarely notice but for her the inclusion of her father is the largest part of the book. Well, I noticed and for me, it loomed large, as you can tell by the amount of googling it provoked. It's just such a strange decision: why include one's dead father in an otherwise non-autobiographical novel, as the hallucination of the psychotic protagonist? To make the reader feel like they're going crazy and overvaluing ideas? To invoke a Freudian feel wherein the reader sits around asking “but what does she mean by her dead father?” It's so very weird and it completely broke my ability to otherwise concentrate on the novel at all.

What I did appreciate even more knowing that Rivka grew up with a meteorologist for a father was her obvious love of language. It was clear that she had been rolling around words and turns of phrase in her head for a long time, taking them in and out of context, so when she got the chance to explore every possible meaning of every phrase, she really made the technical language sing.