A topic/the Author's Style

For quarter 3 reading, I chose the book atmospheric disturbances by Rivka Galchen. The book is about a man who comes home one day and believes his wife has been replaced with a duplicate. He spends the remainder of the book (as far as I know), attempting to locate her. It has many topics, major ones, almost one each chapter, but I believe one of the important underlying ones in the first section of the book is the point of appearances. Dr. Leo Liebenstein is a psychiatrist. From the author's descriptions, Leo is astute and fits his job. In the very first page of the book, Leo notices (about his wife) that she had the "Same everyting, but it wasn't Rema"(1). He goes on to make several psychological observations about why the fake Rema (his wife) is different than the real one. The topic here, physical appearance as a defining aspect of a person, is brought up in this quote. Any man such as Leo who has lived with someone for an extent of time will come to be accustomed to their idiosyncracies and subtle traits. The imitation has the same appearance, the same Argentinian accent, even the same flawed english. But to a psychologist, or to one with a close bond to Rema, it is obvious that the woman in his apartment is an immitation, jdging just, for one example, by her love of dogs. Another line applying to this topic comes in a part of the book when Leo and (the false) Rema are having a conversation at home. Leo thinks "the longer I stared at that knuckle the more it grew foreign rather than familiar. Pretty hands. Pretty knuckles. Pretty little way of holding a tea mug"(30). Leo knows the doppelganger is not the real Rema simply because of the real Rema's quirky inability to look 'pretty'. He knows an impostor even from a small gesture with a tea mug. This staunchly supports the topic of image and appearance. It says that appearance is not a good judge of character (or reality) and that judging solely by image will throw you off course.
Another interesting thing about this book is the unique literary style. This is the first book of author Rivka Galchen. She has an MD as a fiction author and therefore has the somewhat groundbreaking potential to write detail oriented yet emotional prose. There are examples all over the text, but one that stands out in particular is actually the chapter titles. One chapter, divided into subchapters, has the titles "my mesalliance"(18) and "A pyrrhic victory"(21) for the subchapters. I had to look up mesalliance (anxiety), and pyrrhic (initial) to understand the meaning of the chapter. I actually find this to be a good thing since not only does the interesting word choice keep you on your toes and provide better description, but it also emphasized certain underused words that prove to be key. I think the author did this on purpose, to help the reader understand the important points of the rather convoluted plot. Another unique literary trait of this book is the sort of 'analyzing sentance' at the end of each chapter. At the end of chapter 5, Leo says "Though my initial progress did not look or feel like progress, I believe it was a kind of progress, that of just staying in place, of not slipping backward into despair"(34) These summarizing sentances, at the end of almost every chapter, are quite useful to better understand the story's progression. They also give the reader a sub-topic to chew on, (a clincher?) For example, this 'summary' makes the reader wonder if non-regression can constitute progress. This aspect of the wirting style helps keep the reader interested and following the plot.