synopsis:

Houellebecq's novel is a damning indictment of modern society (or rather: modern French society). the author depicts an empty wasteland that has been "atomised" as people have lost themselves in individualityand seem incapable of forming meaningful bonds or ties or being in love.

Much of the novel shows how horrible and empty modern life itself is. It centers on two half-brothers, the prominent scientist Michel Djerzinski and happiless teacher Bruno. They are children of broken homes and a broken society, floundering about, looking for a purpose. Bruno wallows in sex as well as many other (generally unsatisfactory) variations. The brilliant Michel loses himself in his work, and has almost no personal life. he walks away from his work for a while, takes a year off to "think", but in the end turns back to lose himself completely in it.

Houellebecq's novel is a curious but largely successful mix of description and philosophizing. The year of Michel's sabbatical frames most of the novel, though there are many scenes and accounts from earlier in Bruno and Michel's lives, showing how they got to where they are and became who they are.

Bruno and Michel are not really representative of the society Houellebecq attacks, though they can be seen as extreme consequences of it.

Houellebecq agrees that sex is central to society, that's why there is so much of it in this book, but he certainly takes a dim view of it or rather: what it has become in this society. Love is an ideal that still vaguely exists, but is shown to be an impossibility in this society.

Houellebecq's critique is not simpleminded, though the presentation occasionally lacks subtlety. some descriptions deserve analisys, and there's a fair amount of philosophizing on the side; much of it quite interesting.

Where Michel turns to science, Bruno is a would-be poet and writer (achieving very limited success). It is too neat a separation, two sides of the author himself, divided for literary effect, but Houellebecq uses them quite effectively to make his points. Bruno is the greater failure in life. His outlook is Nietzschean ("pretty second-rate Nietzschean at that" he silently admits).

It is in Michel, the brilliant biologist, that Houellebecq places his greater hopes. The book does not end in the present, but rather looks ahead at another ten years or so of work by Michel, and then provides an epilogue which summarizes what happened in the decades after.

on this book:

Houellebecq wants to shock and to provoke people, and he succeeded, especially with this novel. In France, he is infamous for giving Michel the same last name - Djerzinski - as a high-ranking Stalinist official and then defending the gesture by saying Stalin wasn't such a bad guy. After all, Houellebecq told a French magazine, Stalin 'killed a lot of anarchists'. His antipathy for democracy ('Liberty is equivalent to suffering,' he said on French TV) has caused much hand-wringing among the intelligentsia. His confidence, however, remains unshakable. 'I find myself morally perfect,' he said. Or: 'I am not depressed. It's the world that's depressing.'