The Audio Book Club on Atmospheric Disturbances.

The Audio Book Club on Atmospheric Disturbances.

The Audio Book Club on Atmospheric Disturbances.

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May 21 2009 10:13 AM

The Audio Book Club on Atmospheric Disturbances

Our critics discuss Rivka Galchen's debut novel.

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debut novel about a psychiatrist named Leo Liebenstein who wakes up one morning to find that his wife, Rima, has been replaced by a simulacrum.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.

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 writer at large and a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine.

Katie Roiphe, professor at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, is the author of Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Marriages and In Praise of Messy Lives.