The Audio Book Club on Atmospheric Disturbances
Our critics discuss Rivka Galchen's debut novel.
Posted Thursday, May 21, 2009, at 10:13 AM
To listen to the Slate Audio Book Club discussion of Rivka Galchen's Atmospheric Disturbances, click the arrow on the player below.
You can also download the audio file here, or click here to subscribe to the Slate Audio Book Club feed in iTunes.
Get your 14-day free trial of Gabfest sponsor Audible.com, which includes a credit for one free audio book, here. Atmospheric Disturbances is available on Audible.
This month, the Audio Book Club looks at Rivka Galchen's Atmospheric Disturbances—a debut novel about a psychiatrist named Leo Liebenstein who wakes up one morning to find that his wife, Rima, has been replaced by a simulacrum. Leo then sets out on a picaresque journey to find the "real" Rima, which brings him both to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Patagonia. In a 45-minute conversation, critics Meghan O'Rourke, Troy Patterson, and Katie Roiphe discuss how Galchen manages to balance Postmodern playfulness with sincere warmth.
If you'd like to get an early start on the next book club selection, pick up copies of "The Swimmer" by John Cheever and A Good Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O'Connor. Watch for—and listen to—our discussion of "The Swimmer" and A Good Man Is Hard To Find in June.
Is Your State Bird a Stupid State Bird? What It Should Be Instead.
Enterprise vs. Millennium Falcon: Which is the Fastest?
Eleanor Roosevelt's License to Pack Heat
Meghan O'Rourke is Slate's culture critic and an advisory editor. She was previously an editor at The New Yorker. The Long Goodbye, a memoir about her mother's death, is now out in paperback.
Troy Patterson is Slate's television critic.
Katie Roiphe, professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, is the author most recently of Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Marriages, and the forthcoming In Praise of Messy Lives.