Les Particules élémentaires

Two half-brothers, Michel and Bruno, are the centre of this novel. Michel is a biologist who lives in near total isolation, devoted to research on molecular genetics; Bruno is a teacher consumed by sexual frustration, who looks for relief in swingers' clubs and holiday camps. Houellebecq tracks the failures of their mother's hippie generation, their lonely childhoods, and the loveless adult lives that follow. As Michel's research moves toward a future where humans might be replaced by a new kind of being, the book argues that modern liberal society has ruined intimacy.

It is a blunt, provocative novel for readers who can stomach bleak social satire and explicit material. What you get is a sharp, if bitter, portrait of late twentieth-century France and a science-fiction ending that gives the pessimism a strange twist.

Deep, inward-looking, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

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