Atmospheric Disturbances (2008)

There are passages so achingly beautiful in Rivka Galchen's Atmospheric Disturbances — about love, resilience, and perception — that you will not mind picking through a high-concept narrative that would have worked better as a short story. Leo Liebenstein, a middle-aged shrink, becomes convinced that the woman who returns to his apartment one day is not his wife, Rema, but an ''impostress.'' Thereafter, he refers to her as ''the simulacrum'' and struggles to learn what has befallen the real Rema, just as we struggle to figure out what exactly has befallen Leo. It's worth the effort. A-