Featured Reading Guide
Michel Houellebecq
Half-brothers Michel and Bruno have a mother in common but little else. Michel is a molecular biologist, a thinker and idealist, a man with no erotic life to speak of and little in the way of human society. Bruno, by contrast, is a libertine, though more in theory than in practice, his endless lust is all too rarely reciprocated. Both are symptomatic members of our atomised society, where religion has given way to shallow ‘new age’ philosophies and love to meaningless sexual connections. Atomised (Les Particules elementaires) tells the stories of the two brothers, but the real subject of the…
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Michel Houellebecq lives in County Cork, Ireland. He is the bestselling author of Whatever , Atomised , Platform , Lanzarote and The Possibility of an Island . He is also a poet, essayist and rap artist.
topAbout the Book
Half-brothers Michel and Bruno have a mother in common but little else. Michel is a molecular biologist, a thinker and idealist, a man with no erotic life to speak of and little in the way of human society. Bruno, by contrast, is a libertine, though more in theory than in practice, his endless lust is all too rarely reciprocated. Both are symptomatic members of our atomised society, where religion has given way to shallow ‘new age’ philosophies and love to meaningless sexual connections. Atomised (Les Particules elementaires) tells the stories of the two brothers, but the real subject of the novel is in its dismantling of contemporary society and its assumptions, in its political incorrectness, and its caustic and penetrating asides on everything from anthropology to the problem pages of girls’ magazines. A dissection of modern lives and loves. By turns funny, acid, infuriating, didactic, touching and visceral.
topMichel Houellebecq interview/review
The Observer Magazine, 19th November 2000
“To spend a weekend in [Houellebecq’s] company is to become an unwitting participant in a sensory-deprivation experiment. External stimuli are reduced to a minimum. Physical movement is discouraged. Likewise, talking and eating and any other activity that might detract from the primary objective – getting from Saturday morning to Sunday night with as little conscious awareness as possible. Living outside Dublin… helps: he knows almost no one in the city and doesn’t like to speak English. When I rang the bell of his suburban town house, I was the first person to have done so in quite some time. Houellebecq answered the door in stockinged feet, blinked at me with his sad, brown eyes and ushered me into the living room. He curled up in a chair with a pack of Silk Cut and a bottle of Jim Beam and hardly moved for the entire weekend. He murmured obligingly in response to my questions, but finishing a sentence often proved beyond him. Whatever energy he had seemed mostly consumed by the quiet labour of existing.
By the time we sat down to dinner – in the living room – he was too inebriated to eat. He picked at his boiled crab and got some of it on his sleeve. His head began to nod; his eyelids drooped. But for the first time all day, he looked almost cheerful. ‘I am the star of French literature,’ he slurred. ‘The most radical one of all.’ He reached over and petted my knee. ‘What’s your name again?’ he mumbled. ‘How would you like to be in my erotic film?’”
topStarting Points for Discussion
- The author often describes landmarks in the characters’ lives in terms of the biological processes underlying them, for example, the change of hormones in Annabelle’s body as she reaches puberty. What does he achieve by this?.
- Bruno comes to the conclusion, ‘…women were indisputably better than men.’ How are the female characters handled in this novel and what roles do they play? What does Houellebecq say about the ‘sexual revolution’ in general?
- Do you think Michel’s plans for the genetic revolution could really work? Is individuality the sole cause of unhappiness for the novel’s characters?
- Are the characters in this novel capable of self-determinism or are they solely products of their culture and society? Does the author allow any place for free-will or morality?
- ‘…the serial killers of the 1990’s were the spiritual children of the hippies of the Sixties…’. Do you agree? Why, according to the author, does society seem to have broken down?
- The author has been accused of being both right- and left-wing in his political outlook: does he present a particular political stance in this book? Is this a moral or an immoral book?
Other Books by Michel Houellebecq
Lanzarote
Realising that his New Year is probably going to be a disaster, as usual, our…
Platform
Michel is a civil-servant at the Ministry of Culture. When his father is mu…
Vintage Satire: Gulliver’s…
2 classic books for the price of 1: Vintage Satire is a limited edition gift…
Suggested Further Reading
- Brave New World ~ Aldous Huxley
- Lord of the Flies ~ William Golding
- American Psycho ~ Bret Easton Ellis
- The Story of the Eye ~ Georges Bataille
- Journey to the End of the Night ~ Louis Ferdinand Céline