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The Elementary Particles

by Michel Houellebecq, Frank Wynne (Translator)

3.74 of 5 stars 3.74 · rating details · 8,973 ratings · 670 reviews

An international literary phenomenon, The Elementary Particles is a frighteningly original novel–part Marguerite Duras and part Bret Easton Ellis-that leaps headlong into the malaise of contemporary existence.

Bruno and Michel are half-brothers abandoned by their mother, an unabashed devotee of the drugged-out free-love world of the sixties. Bruno, the older, has become a r...more

Paperback, 272 pages

Published November 13th 2001 by Vintage (first published 1998)

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Aug 22, 2008 Greg rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, life-is-shit

"It's a curious idea to reproduce when you don't even like life."

It's rare to come across a book filled with so pure of hate. At first I thought maybe it's was just some good old fashioned misogyny, with maybe a little bit of nationalism and Arab hating thrown in, but then something curious happened, the whole of society got thrown into the hate-fest that is this book. Hippies? Hate them a lot. Italians? Yep, really hate them, we don't say why we just do. Nature? Fuck it!! Sex? Love it but hate...more

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Feb 16, 2013 Joshua Nomen-Mutatio rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Joshua Nomen-Mutatio by: brian

Shelves: fiction

Wow. What an incredible book. The Epilogue makes a huge difference in how one might view it on the whole. It certainly did for me. I was getting so depressed by the end that I almost chucked it aside around the 90% mark because I felt a panic attack coming on. But I took a deep breath and I switched up my reading soundtrack and I pushed on and am very glad that I did. The Epilogue really clarifies so much that precedes it. Leading up to that point it is basically 100% bleak, and I mean truly, tr...more Wow. What an incredible book. The Epilogue makes a huge difference in how one might view it on the whole. It certainly did for me. I was getting so depressed by the end that I almost chucked it aside around the 90% mark because I felt a panic attack coming on. But I took a deep breath and I switched up my reading soundtrack and I pushed on and am very glad that I did. The Epilogue really clarifies so much that precedes it. Leading up to that point it is basically 100% bleak, and I mean truly, truly bleak--though extremely interesting and entertaining every step of the way.

There's a fair amount of gross sexual stuff along the way as well, but it's always presented in a detached, rather ungleeful way, and as such it has a point beyond mere shock and/or titillation that fully justifies its presence. To say this book is just about sexual frustration is to hugely miss the point. This is a BIG PICTURE book but carried out through a tightly crafted narrative mainly surrounding two brothers birthed from a massively disfunctional genetic pool with one shared parent: a terminally miserable, often nauseatingly sexually deviant literature professor named Bruno and a largely emotionless but harmless microbiologist in deep almost inhuman isolation named Michel.

The book covers so many subjects that I'm sort of dumbfounded and slow to begin relaying them all. Existential, cultural, scientific, philosophical, historical, etc. Consciousness, genetics, sex, death, physics, religion, cruelty, love, parenthood, childhood, adulthood, happiness, suffering, etc.

Despite the often searing and pitiless slings and arrows thrown at humanity, I think it is also a book that is deeply sympathetic to the desperate flailing, the absurd flaws, and the open wounds of humanity, self-inflicted and otherwise. Its final sentence is a straight up dedication to humankind, despite its many detailed failures and sufferings and defects, and despite the claim that a new and improved species must take its place.

I was holding a solid four star rating of this in my head until the final leg of the journey, around Section Three and the Epilogue. So if any readers who take my opinions as any sort of guide end up having trouble with it along the way, I implore them to press on. (less)

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Jan 17, 2010 Manny rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: french, too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts, older-men-younger-women

You can interpret this book in several different ways. A lot of people view it as a depressing, hate-filled rant, filled with a really startling amount of unpleasant sex. I'm not saying that that's necessarily incorrect. In fact, my immediate association was with the fictitious books that Moreland invents in one of the Anthony Powell novels: "Seated One Day at my Organ", by the author of "One Hundred Disagreeable Sexual Experiences". But I think there are more interesting ways of reading Les Par...more

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Jul 14, 2007 Lorenzo rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: french, aaa-my-library

This book has made me laugh. It's not a compliment.
Every character here is monodimensional and unrealistic, while the story itself is quite ridicolous.

And after the tenth masturbation scene filled with philosophical rubbish and Andre Gide quotes I've felt a big nausea coming up.

There are many novelists who have a kind of obsession for sex and many of them are quite good like Philip Roth and McEwan, but Houellebecq in my opinion is not.

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Mar 24, 2009 Rhonda rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book is a stunning surprise to me as I was properly prepared to dislike it before I picked it up. Although I was determined to finish the book, I was not prepared for what a wonderful book this is. This book is a consummate sociological description and commentary of the second half of the twentieth century's social revolution in western culture. The psychology isn't too bad either.

Because it is a work of fiction, I interpret it as a grand sociological critique, with some fictional leeway, o...more

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Jun 12, 2008 Avital rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: french

An unconventional, provocative book that seduced me into the heart of the most pessimistic social and philosophical conclusions regarding the collapse of the individual as well as the whole society in the face of failed values. Houellebecq puts the most outrageous words in the mouth of his characters, two brothers. They complain or comment about aging and body decay, lack of communication and cruelty of men. They also discuss wisdom, science and religion. One brother goes to extremes with his se...more An unconventional, provocative book that seduced me into the heart of the most pessimistic social and philosophical conclusions regarding the collapse of the individual as well as the whole society in the face of failed values. Houellebecq puts the most outrageous words in the mouth of his characters, two brothers. They complain or comment about aging and body decay, lack of communication and cruelty of men. They also discuss wisdom, science and religion. One brother goes to extremes with his sexuality and the other is hardly interested in it, but both aren't satisfied. There are short breaks, where they come to appreciate women's compassion and love, implying it could have saved them if they had been capable of feeling it as well. (He would come back to it in Platform.)
The story serves as a conduit to introduce the readers with bleak reflections about themselves. I don't know if it's good, but it's extraordinary.

Here's a taste, a hilarious dialogue about brazil:
"But I really like Brazilian dance," she added, obviously trying to absolve herself for her interest in African dance. Much more of this and Bruno would really get irritated. He was starting to get pissed off about the world's obsession with Brazil. What was so great about Brazi? as far as he knew, Brazil was a shithole full of morons obsessed with soccer and Formula One.
It was the ne plus ultra of violence, corruption and misery. If ever a country were loathsome, that country, specifically was Brazil.
"Sophie," announced Bruno, "I could go on vacation to Brazil tomorrow. I'd look around a favela. the minibus would be armed-plated; so in the morning, safe, unafraid, I'd go sightseeing, check out eight-year-old prostitutes dying of AIDS. I'd spend the afternoon at the beach surrounded by filthy-rich drug barons and pimps. I'm sure that in such a passionate, not to mention liberal society, I could shake off the malaise of Western civilization. You're right, sophie: I'll go straight to a travel agent as soon as I get home.
Sophie considered him for a moment, her expression thoughtful, her brow lined with concern. eventually she said sadly: "You must have really suffered..."

MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ(less)

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Jul 25, 2007 Grayem82 rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Oh God. I'm about half way through this book, which I picked up on a whim after finishing the excellent Blindness by Jose Saramago. I needed something else to read until I got a copy of Dave Eggers' What is the What, and this had got a lot of raves.

So far, I'm as close to tossing this book away unfinished as I have ever been. I almost always finish books, but this is just a chore.

As offensive as parts of it are (yes, yes, I'm supposed to be offended, and I can see the ambiguity about whether the...more

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Jul 18, 2007 sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars

Okay, I decided I would take a go at actually justifying my rating for this book, rather than just make half-hearted apologies at my preference for a so-absurdly misogynistic and, let's be frank, pornographic novel.

First of all, I like Houellebecq's unrelenting pessimism. It's far beyond nihlism - so more destructive and negative, so more emphatic in its rejection of bougeoise norms, of religion, culture, capitalism. This book (as well as the other Houellebecq I read, Platform) captures the ble...more Okay, I decided I would take a go at actually justifying my rating for this book, rather than just make half-hearted apologies at my preference for a so-absurdly misogynistic and, let's be frank, pornographic novel.

First of all, I like Houellebecq's unrelenting pessimism. It's far beyond nihlism - so more destructive and negative, so more emphatic in its rejection of bougeoise norms, of religion, culture, capitalism. This book (as well as the other Houellebecq I read, Platform) captures the bleak purposeless of modern life better than almost anything I can think of. As a recent college grad who for the first time in her life finds herself waking at 7:30 am each morning so she can go plug herself in to the grinding mechanics of capitalism; someone whose weekends consist of the churn of drunk-hungover-drunk-hungover, who struggles to find meaning in music, beauty, sex, religion, whatever -- I can relate to this. The emotionally unavailable scientist. The absolutely pathetic, lonely, sex-addicted failure. The petty, worthless little bureaucrat in Platform. I'm not, you know, depressed or anything, but I can share at least in some part their view of the world as bleak, lonely, and irredeemable except through very brief moments of relieved pain via drinking and sex.

Secondly, the book is darkly funny. Not amateurish darkly funny, because, I mean, this book is dark. The things in it that are funny are the things that have to do with the inevitability of death, the pointlessness of life, the drive for sex that is unsatisfied in pathetic, heartbreakingly inadequate losers -- are you cracking up yet? If not, you might not get it. The humor is subtle, and when I first read this book (in the original French), I missed a lot of the humor. But the humor is there - the question is whether or not the reader is capable of appreciating it. One of those laugh-if-you-don't-want-to-cry things.

Thirdly -- okay, yes, the book is misogynistic, maybe kind of racist, certainly anti-religion -- but at least Houellebecq is fair. His hatred with modern society is pretty blindly applied. The men in this book aren't exactly great upstanding characters, either, you know?

So, there you go : like I said, don't go telling the feminist sisterhood or my mom that I enjoyed this book. But if you're looking for some dark, high-brow pornography, and you have a strong stomach, this might be a good choice for you.(less)

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Jan 02, 2013 Milica Chotra rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The universe is merely a chance arrangement of elementary particles. A transitory image in the midst of chaos. Which will end with the inevitable: the human race will disappear. Other races will appear, and disappear in turn. The heavens are cold and empty, traversed by the faint light of half-dead stars. Which, also, will disappear. Everything disappears. And human actions are just as random and senseless as the movements of elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, fine sentiments? Pure “Vic...more The universe is merely a chance arrangement of elementary particles. A transitory image in the midst of chaos. Which will end with the inevitable: the human race will disappear. Other races will appear, and disappear in turn. The heavens are cold and empty, traversed by the faint light of half-dead stars. Which, also, will disappear. Everything disappears. And human actions are just as random and senseless as the movements of elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, fine sentiments? Pure “Victorian fictions”. There is only egotism. Cold, undiluted and dazzling, writes Houellebecq in his essay on H. P. Lovecraft, in which we find many elements of "The Elementary Particles".

This novel reflects author's cultural pessimism, his contempt for the atomized, egotistic, decadent Western civilization, its liberal democracy and capitalism. It is a bitter mixture of loneliness and misanthropy, desire, frustration and disappointment; philosophy, social critique and speculative science, and pornography, loveless and pleasureless.

Ours is a culture obsessed with youth and beauty and, while their bodies are irreversibly decaying, Houellebecq's aging characters are struggling to find a reason to live on in such a world, but still hoping that maybe they'll touch something that resembles love, when, devoid of other emotions, they feel only compassion for those who suffer the same fate. While some readers might be put off by ca. 100 pages describing Bruno's miserable sex life, I found this bad, sad porn an appropriate expression of the loneliness and emptiness of human existence depicted here, but it is also a search for consolation and warmth, that they feel they deserve, just like everyone else.

On the other hand, in a kind of a quantum mechanical metaphor, there's his brother Michel, a rational scientist, freed from all these bodily passions, who seems to have given up every hope in humanity, and, influenced by Huxley and eugenics, wants to create an "improved", asexual version of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. This sci-fi element might be the weakest part of the novel, and while Michel's story is not as compelling as his brother's, it's an interesting juxtaposition - they even seem like two faces of the same person, and having in mind Houellebecq's biography (e.g. his mother and two different DOBs that he shares with his characters), it might be the author himself.

Conclusion: Read this book, it's not (just) a porn.

[Read this review on my blog](less)

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Aug 23, 2011 Emily rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics, contemporary, favorites

Although I had heard of Michel Houellebecq before, this was the first novel of his I've delved into. The Elementary Particles created somewhat the controversy in France when it was released, and did so on a smaller scale when it was translated into English and brought to our American shores. The Economist writes that "Houllebecq is France's biggest literary sensation since Francoise Sagan, people are saying Since Albert Camus." While that is an extraordinary comment to make, I must say that in s...more

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May 22, 2007 James rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Post-humanists, cynics, sex-fiends

I'm tired of being human; I wanna be post-human. A start with an aside: an old professor once described his experience of being asked to defend Naked Lunch during its trial in Britain against charges of pornography. My professor declined to defend the book not because he deemed it pornographic, but because it already had enough defenders of a status high enough to insure that it didn't get banned and because he wasn't sure, at that early age in his career, whether or not he wanted his name attac...more I'm tired of being human; I wanna be post-human. A start with an aside: an old professor once described his experience of being asked to defend Naked Lunch during its trial in Britain against charges of pornography. My professor declined to defend the book not because he deemed it pornographic, but because it already had enough defenders of a status high enough to insure that it didn't get banned and because he wasn't sure, at that early age in his career, whether or not he wanted his name attached to that defense; his own private verdict was that in order to be pornographic the work in question would have to contain as its aim (or main purpose) the arousal of the reader, and he personally didn't find the book all that arousing; he went so far as to claim that anyone who would be aroused or titilated by the book probably had more issues to begin with than would be caused by reading.
All of this is a preface to a consideration of Houellebecq's sex-drenched work. Readers often seem initially put off by Houellebecq for the sex (once they get beyond that, they usually find something else disturbing, and often for good reason; there seems to be something in this work to offend everyone); but is the massive amount of sex pornographic? Is it aimed at (mere (or perhaps not merely mere)) arousal? I don't think it is. Reading this book is a bit like reading de Sade; there's an initial titilation, then a realization of the relentlessly mechanistic rhetoric (and view) of this particular human interaction, and then a kind of coldness sets in...
At its best moments, Elementary Particles is a shreddingly funny argument for the elimination of the human species (we can evolve ourselves beyond our stupid, violent, ridiculous selves, so why not), and though it's funny, I'm not entirely certain it's a joke. Houellebecq takes the idea of moving beyond the human to a literal place; that leads to questions of what, exactly, it means to be human, and the book focuses on the extremes of a binary, Schopenhaurian Michel, Nietzschean Bruno. Most of the sex-obsessed passages come out of Bruno's meandering life (most of the funniest too), but at the end what happens to Bruno suggests that his method of existence is exemplary of what's flawed in humanity and must be eliminated. That in itself is a disturbing thought; we're back to Nazis again. Houellebecq finally has enough decency, though, to suggest that humanity doesn't need, necessarily, to be killed off, it can do the job itself just fine.
I'm not trying to overlook the obvious flaws in the book (some repetition, sections can get drawn on a bit long), nor am I trying to downplay the mysogyny or the racism (though those aspects of Houellebecq's books are more complicated than his detractors usually admit; the context for the mysogyny and the racism is usually slippery in terms of identification or excoriation); but I would like to suggest that Elementary Particles, and Houellebecq's books in general, can be read in terms of the search for a post-human superstructure on which to hang the human (pun intended; sorry). Here it's science, later it's economics (Platform; even more sex-drenched), but in both books the questions seem to be the same: what is this subject and how do we represent it within the systems that it composed to compose it?(less)

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Mar 27, 2013 Jonathan Francisco rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It started out really good. I was so certain I would be giving it a 5 star rating. This is why my roommate couldn't believe and understand why I gave it just a 2. We we're having dinner when I told him. "It's just a 2." I said. He grabbed the knife from the table and threats were made. I am not kidding. I remember he gave the book a 4.

I remember feeling this way with Kundera's Unbearable Lightness. Both started great. Atomized started even better. It was funny. There's that certain type of serio...more

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May 12, 2010 R. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010

Some things you'll just never see:

The Elementary Particles
by Michel Houellebecq (goodreads author!)

***

Houellebecq! Mon semblable, mon frer!

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Apr 23, 2012 brianna rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites

Atomised was beautiful.

The central characters, Michel and Bruno, were pretty dislikable, but they both showed cracks of humanity. For example, Bruno's wildly misogynistic, crude, and disgusting trajectory was often punctuated with moments where I couldn't help but understand and feel sorry for him. Likewise with Michel's sterile, cold, and detached innocence - as much as I wanted to slap him, ultimately he is shown to hold somewhere in himself deep emotion.

The ending was brilliant - the 'twist'...more

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Jul 16, 2012 ΑνναΦ rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: letteratura-francese

Come voce che grida nel deserto

Si esce dalla lettura di questo libro annichiliti, non c'è speranza di felicità o senso nella vita dell'uomo che ha avuto la ventura di vivere nella società materialista. Nietzsche ha ucciso ogni umana pietà, la Chiesa ha perso la sua sacralità e con essa la forza del messaggio morale del cristianesimo, il sessantotto e la liberazione sessuale hanno svincolato il sesso dall'amore, ucciso l'amore paternale e disintegrato la famiglia, hanno ucciso ogni possibilità di...more Come voce che grida nel deserto

Si esce dalla lettura di questo libro annichiliti, non c'è speranza di felicità o senso nella vita dell'uomo che ha avuto la ventura di vivere nella società materialista. Nietzsche ha ucciso ogni umana pietà, la Chiesa ha perso la sua sacralità e con essa la forza del messaggio morale del cristianesimo, il sessantotto e la liberazione sessuale hanno svincolato il sesso dall'amore, ucciso l'amore paternale e disintegrato la famiglia, hanno ucciso ogni possibilità di felicità nel mondo relegando l' uomo a una quasi fiera, in balìa di soli istinti fisici. Dominano narcisismo ed egoismo.
E l'umanità così “liberata” da ogni vincolo morale e religioso e da ogni responsabilità, ma ben lungi dall'essere felice, brancola nel mondo in disperata ricerca di una pur minima proroga alla fine ineluttabile che attende tutti, di un po' di felicità o di un senso.
La giovinezza, in cui tutto sembra possibile e facile, passa veloce tra occasioni perse, errori casuali che segneranno per sempre vite. L'età adulta, portando con sé la sua accresciuta consapevolezza, cerca di stordirsi col sesso o con i piaceri materiali, capitolando poco dopo. L'unica via d'uscita per questi personaggi ricolmi di una disperazione siderale è il suicidio.
Un libro amaro e bellissimo, la denuncia di un intellettuale che si assume il dovere di denunciare il decadimento di una società al tramonto, l'unica voce che ancora possa levarsi, dopo la morte di ogni ideologia, spiritualità e persino di ogni sentimento umano. Le ultime 50 pagine, poi, sono superbe: ogni cinismo si scioglie per lasciare spazio solo a una desolazione senza fine.
Tuttavia, la visione niccianamente distruttiva di Houellebecq lascia uno spiraglio di speranza nell'amore, esso è l'unica speranza di felicità per l'essere umano, seppur remota come ipotesi, tuttavia possibile. E aggrappati a questa possibilità, a quest' isola di amore che è possibile, Houellebecq ci trascina per anni, dicendoci in tutti i libri le stesse convinzioni disperate, come voce che grida nel deserto, non perché pensa che serva ma perché, probabilmente, non può farne a meno.

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Mar 18, 2013 Jay Gertzman rated it 5 of 5 stars

When a writer good enough to win a readership is tagged racist, misogynist, or pornographic by guardians of decency such as the NY Times, attention must be paid. Michel Houellebec, b/c of his The Elementary Particles, has undergone this kind of contempt, as did Henry Miller for Tropic of Cancer, Burroughs for Naked Lunch, Manchette for Fatale, and anarchist writers such as Bataille, de Sade, Artaud, Michael Perkins (Evil Companions), and Samuel Delaney (Hogg, unpublishable for many years).

The El...more When a writer good enough to win a readership is tagged racist, misogynist, or pornographic by guardians of decency such as the NY Times, attention must be paid. Michel Houellebec, b/c of his The Elementary Particles, has undergone this kind of contempt, as did Henry Miller for Tropic of Cancer, Burroughs for Naked Lunch, Manchette for Fatale, and anarchist writers such as Bataille, de Sade, Artaud, Michael Perkins (Evil Companions), and Samuel Delaney (Hogg, unpublishable for many years).

The Elementary Particles is about the degeneration of 20th century humanity. The evidence is an all-world level of self-importance, exemplified not by endless war or the corporate machines that encourage it, but (the narrator expounds) by New Age clichés about allowing one’s sexual impulses full indulgence in Club Med or sex resorts where S/M, group sex, and orgies complement amateur music, painting, and “open” discussions about “hang-ups” and infantile repressions. It’s the sixties’ New Freedom, as imported from the US by its “prurient-minded” mass entertainment industry, that made this degeneration possible. The sickness is terminal, so much so that no future reproduction of the species as we know it is worthwhile. At the end of the novel, a Final Solution presents itself (see pp.246-63). The shadowy narrator, a shadow (but how can one say a replica?) of the author, declares the book to be “a last tribute to [now almost extinct] humanity.”

Supporters of feminism, mutually-consensual sexual experimentation, and equality for racial minorities are accused of single-minded advocacy of their causes. It’s bad enough to be denigrated if your deeply held beliefs are equated with fanatical escape from individual awareness and free will. But the “prophet” of the new order is an emotionally crippled, impotent biologist, Michel Djerzinski. He is responsible for the failure to love Annabel, a beautiful, trusting woman devoted to him since they were teenagers. He loves his granny instead, and the remote Atlantic coast of Ireland, as does Houellebecq. They also share a surname. This authorial doppleganger has a chief disciple and mass popularizer, named Hubczejak (as in Houllebecq?). Not many novelists have so carefully teased out a readership’s loathing.

He asked for it, but does Houellebecq deserve the outlaw status to which he is at least indifferent? Even less so, I think, than the other anarchist and “hard-core porno” writers I mentioned in the first paragraph. Their works also show a dispassionate contempt for “ordinary,” “decent” feelings in support of patriotism, family, democracy, and the verbal pabulum farted out by our bobbleheads touting our increasingly militarized police, not to mention the troops (hush up regarding their traumatic stress). The admirably ruthless iciness of the anarchist writer is a result of seeing “the thing itself,” or "the truth at the end of that long newspaper spoon" (Burroughs). Houllebecq is more vulnerable, for not only is his “prophet” a Willy Wet-Leg, but his spiritual murder of Annabelle is made worse by his inability to recognize her as immune to the end-time degeneracy of “priceless” credit cards, “I guarantee it” internet dating services, megachurches, gated communities, and “liberated” sex clubs. And his half-brother Bruno is an even damper Wet-Leg. A compulsive masturbator, truly degenerate Bruno is obsessed with cybersex, porno, group sex and orgies, although he is a teacher (who has molested a student). He actually finds a woman brave and honest enough to love him. Faced with having to care for her in her final illness, he runs away to a mental institution, leaving Christienne (another exception to the schmucky “prophet” Michel’s judgment--and especially that of the book's narrator--on the damned human race) to die alone while he reads about himself in Kafka’s stories and waits for Godot, cock in hand.

About that shadowy narrator: the anarchist novels I've read have very intense, disturbed narrators, either first or third person. But they are people authentically dedicated to what they believe, and what they have experienced. That is what makes the works so compelling. Houellebeck's Whatever has such a narrator.The Elementary Particles clearly does not, not that morally indignant critics have noticed. Houellebecq is way beyond them.

It takes guts for the novelist to invite real hate by using the protagonists he does. The Elementary Particles is a complex anarchist work, if it is one at all (important writers are always going beyond categories, and relish the bleats of critics who cannot follow them)--but it is not nihilistic. Not for readers willing to see beyond their first responses. Such readers would have to look clearly at Christienne, Annabelle, Michel and Bruno, look clearly at their own world, at themselves in the mirror it provides, and at the philosophy, if they dare, of the author.

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Dec 28, 2012 Sofia Hallay rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-english

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. The first third of the book was a page turner. I couldn't stop reading and I really liked the scientific asides and the sociological commentaries.

The second third was less interesting. The scientific asides tended to go on for too long, I found them rather annoying at times. I thought the sex scenes were rubbish and boring.

The third part was a bit ... strained. There was a lot of philosophizing, mostly about religion and social values; scientific conclusions were drawn; all of which led to the...more

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Jun 15, 2010 Erin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Wow. I'm not sure where to start on this except to say, it is unlike anything I have ever read. To be honest, I'm not quite sure I've even processed everything in the book, for it is so filled with minute details, both subtle and cruel digs at society as a whole, merely scratching the surface of the real, intrinsic web that is the human psyche. Houllebecq's writing and ideas are like helium-inflated balloons, light as air but possessing the ability to float beyond a clear blue sky into the frigh...more

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May 07, 2008 Paul rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

A lot of this book consists of a tirade of hatred against the author's dear mama. Now finally, the 83 year old hippy herself has emerged from her retreat with all guns blazing. Hilarious article about the whole rancid argument here

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departmen...

Sample quote

"If it hadn't been my son, I wouldn't read that kind of crap, I would put it down straight away, because if there's one thing I detest in the world it's pornography. That book is pure pornography, it's repugnant, it's...more

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May 12, 2007 St. rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Think about all the negative stereotypes that might enter your mind on hearing the words: French novel.

This book will turn those stereotypes into truer reality than you ever thought possible.

And yet, despite the fact that I hated the experience of reading this book, I kept reading it. A friend of mine continues to read Houellebecq's books as they come out,* and I can sort of understand why.

In some ways, it reminds me of the experience I had watching the movie Breaking the Waves, which was ugly...more

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Sep 21, 2008 Arwen rated it 2 of 5 stars

Both oddly engrossing and somehow also barely readable, Elementary Particles, like all of Houllebecq's narcissistic novels, focuses its aim on men solely obsessed with getting their aged and increasingly flaccid penises erect long enough to fulfill the characters' unending pedophiliac whims. This one is worse than The Possibility of an Island, which at least gave readers a few sci-fi reasons for the dystopian world. In the end, nearly both books arrive at the same end: humanity is doomed, filled...more

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Jul 18, 2007 Connie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This novel is offensive and rude and is certainly not one to read before you go to bed. However, it is also a complex novel that raises a lot of questions about the legacy of 60s and 70s hippie culture and how 'free love' has been succeded by abandoned values, moral disillusionment and the commodification of sexuality and relationships. Parts of this book may be considered offensive and it is clear that this book was written to shock but it doesn't do so without purpose. A lot of things in this...more

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Nov 25, 2008 rachel misfiticus rated it 3 of 5 stars

something was very compelling about this book. Despite the rampant misogyny, the blatant racism, and the long camp/club sex scenes that lead no where, I couldn't stop reading. It was like watching clown porn.

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Apr 12, 2013 Giuseppe D rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Di quei libri che non t��aspetti. La nostalgia ne �� il filo conduttore e questo ha reso la lettura un po�� angosciosa e angosciante a volte. Nonostante e per questo, l��ho finito in pochissimo tempo anche perch�� lo stile �� assolutamente fluido. E poi i due filoni narrativi si dividono tra le mie due passioni, le lettere e la biologia manco a farlo apposta. E ci sono moltissimi indizi dai quali trapela una qualche formazione dell��autore in quest��ultimo campo, il che non guasta. All��in...more

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Jan 11, 2011 Mangoo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Seguendo le vite contemporanee di due semi-fratelli dai destini assai diversi ma legati dall'incapacità di vivere, Houellebecq si fornisce il pretesto di gettare uno sguardo lucido, tagliente e analitico sulla decadenza della società occidentale moderna. I fratelli sono particelle "intrecciate" nel senso di EPR, ed esperiscono aspetti ortogonali dell'esistenza contemporanea. Uno si abbrutisce e accanisce sulla perversione sessuale, l'altro si astrae dai piaceri sensoriali per immergersi nella sc...more Seguendo le vite contemporanee di due semi-fratelli dai destini assai diversi ma legati dall'incapacità di vivere, Houellebecq si fornisce il pretesto di gettare uno sguardo lucido, tagliente e analitico sulla decadenza della società occidentale moderna. I fratelli sono particelle "intrecciate" nel senso di EPR, ed esperiscono aspetti ortogonali dell'esistenza contemporanea. Uno si abbrutisce e accanisce sulla perversione sessuale, l'altro si astrae dai piaceri sensoriali per immergersi nella scienza. Le esperienze di dolore, emarginazione, incapacità ad inserirsi nel flusso della vita, delusioni, fallimenti, paure, aberrazioni e morte servono al genio come motivazione per trascenderne definitivamente la necessità, escogitando la riproduzione genetica perfetta che porterà ad una nuova umanità immortale ed unita dall'amore.
Rispetto al precedente romanzo, siamo difronte ad una evoluzione sorprendente. Il testo mostra una erudizione notevole, sia in ambito letterario e filosofico, sia scientifico. Frequenti le digressioni tecniche su meccanica quantistica e filosofia che, oltre a dare spessore alla riflessioni meccanicistiche e decostruttiviste dell'autore, sono consistenti con il suo intento di mostrare la crudezza della realtà al suo livello minimo costitutivo, e in questo fanno da contraltare, all'estremo opposto, alle descrizioni senza filtri di torture sataniste, di orge e del semplice atto sessuale.
Tuttavia la struttura del testo non è molto organica, e l'esito racchiuso nella terza parte è un pò spiazzante nel suo accelerare il tempo della narrazione e focalizzarsi esclusivamente sull'impresa epocale del fratello genio e sull'attività del suo biografo - dischiude un asintoto e una prospettiva sub specie aeternitatis che pare una appendice non troppo radicata nel resto del testo, specialmente considerando tutto lo spazio dato alla vacanza nel centro new age del fratello (a proposito, da notare la grande critica ad Aldous Huxley ivi contenuta, come ispiratore della new age e forse fautore di quella società utopica, insieme al fratello Julian, che descrive in Brave New World e in altri romanzi).
In sintesi, un'opera importante e da esperire, anni luce avanti e 2 ordini di grandezza almeno superiore al sopravvalutatissimo debutto di Giordano.(less)

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Jan 10, 2011 Edma Rita rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Senza bellezza una ragazza è infelice perchè perde qualsiasi possibilità di essere amata.

*

Sarebbe bello se l'io fosse un'illusione; anche se comunque sarebbe un'illusione dolorosa.

*

Esseri umani di questo tipo esistono: esseri umani che lavorano per tutta la vita, e lavorano duro, solo per abnegazione e per amore; che per spirito di abnegazione e di amore danno letteralmente la propria vita al prossimo; che tuttavia non hanno mai in alcun modo la sensazione di sacrificarsi; che in realtà non hai...more

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Dec 11, 2012 Hilary G rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ex Bookworm group review:

How to start reviewing Atomised without being predictable, without Carl thinking we can't see the wood for the trees? Er…. let's say that it definitely wasn't chick lit, though "THE FUTURE IS FEMININE" (so it said). Thank heavens for that.

Actually, my first reaction to the beginnings of this book was amusement. It was so FRENCH. It is so typical of the French to consider such things as the nature of free will and kinky sex practically on the same page. And to assume that...more Ex Bookworm group review:

How to start reviewing Atomised without being predictable, without Carl thinking we can't see the wood for the trees? Er…. let's say that it definitely wasn't chick lit, though "THE FUTURE IS FEMININE" (so it said). Thank heavens for that.

Actually, my first reaction to the beginnings of this book was amusement. It was so FRENCH. It is so typical of the French to consider such things as the nature of free will and kinky sex practically on the same page. And to assume that films (like Emmanuelle) influence rather than reflect the ambient social scenery. When I was in France I got friendly with two guys who were studying cinematography (whatever that is) at Montpellier University and together we went to endless weird films, that were made even more incomprehensible to me because French was not my first language, in which there was serious debate and people mating with horses (or anything similar). Afterwards, we would repair to a nearby café and they would analyse and dissect the film in to the small hours of the morning. I just drank wine.. Though the French are obsessed with sex, they are not truly sexy, because it's all SYMBOLIC. Sex is a PHILOSOPHY, an IDEA, a FASHION, a LITERARY (or cinematic) DEVICE (as here). I tried to think if I had ever come across this mixture of science and sex by an English writer and all I could think of was the muted and polite frustration of the scientist with a frigid wife in Strangers and Brothers by C P Snow, all 10 or more novels I read twenty or thirty years ago, which is as good an illustration as I can muster of the basic difference between the French and the English.

This could (and should) have been a wonderful book. A superior sort of Darwin's Radio, written by a clearly more intelligent and better writer, but it was marred for me by all that gratuitous sex and violence. And I'm sure it was gratuitous. It was obviously meant to mirror the times and perhaps it did, though I don't know many people who lived like this, even in the sixties. It had no need to be so graphic and so revolting, if it was meant to shock, to what purpose? If men are truly like Bruno, and the whole point of their existence is to get sexual satisfaction and the only alternative a mental institution, I feel pity for them. It is to be hoped the new species didn't end up with those glans-of-the-penis/clitoris type nerve endings all over their bodies or they'd have a job doing anything ordinary. By the end of the book, I saw the point of what Houellebecq was trying to achieve. It definitely wasn't pornography because I looked that up and the main point of pornography is sexual arousal and this was a complete turn off. As it was meant to be. But it was overdone. It was too detailed, too disgusting and I doubt that many of the female members of this group will have felt comfortable with it and it is not a matter of puritanism. Other people's sex is distasteful, disgusting or actually quite boring.

I did see what Houellebecq was trying to do, though, and in a way, it was very well done. We saw here all the influences that nudged Michel onto the path he ultimately took, the long distillation of ideas, the slow permeation through his brain, the ultimate eureka. That was all absolutely fascinating, and Houellebecq built his suspense well. I thought there was altogether too much Bruno and not enough Michel in the story, I kept thinking this can't be just about a new cow, but in the end I saw the purpose of the structure, and it was actually worth the wait.

As is usual with books about science, the language sometimes got tantalisingly beyond my ability to understand. This, for example: "It established, for the first time, on the basis of irrefutable thermodynamic arguments, that the chromosomal separation at the moment of meiosis can create haploid gametes, in themselves a source of structural instability." Ah, so it wasn't sex after all, it was haploid gametes? I had never heard of the "Copenhagen Interpretation" (and actually, it doesn't seem to really exist) or know anything about the work of Niels Bohr or Heisenberg and I can't understand what I've read about it, but it still fascinates me. The idea of science being, what was the word, interleaved? with philosophy and religion (The Book of Kells) is quite appealing and somehow very French. Michel was a poet as well as a scientist. This was very French too, but what wasn't, and so was very interesting, was the concept of a Frenchman rejecting the notion of personal freedom.

Another thing I thought Houellebecq did in a masterful way was to carry the reader in entirely the wrong direction for page after page. I got quite annoyed about what I perceived was a male view of love. A rich fantasy world (particularly for women), a game (particularly for men). I can't remember all the references but they were ubiquitous, this was a world with no love (or no love that Michel recognised or Bruno valued), a horrible world (do we live in such a horrible world?) so it was a big surprise and relief when the quick coup de grace was delivered, and that it was based on "the possibility of love".

The book seemed to me to have many resonances of our times which were spot on. There was a piece about Islam that was so relevant, but I can't find it now. He was hardly kinder about other religions, but said they were all temporary, let's hope he is right. And he was right about the sex and all. Hasn''t half of our country recently been gripped by graphic accounts of a celebrity shag, paedophilia seems rife and uncontrollable, the front page of my mum's paper screamed "Lesley Ash breaks rib having sex". I just wish Houllebecq had found other ways to demonstrate this because the violence, maleness and exaggeration of the sex made the book somehow less accessible to me. But again, maybe that was the point. Surprise of surprises, Houellebecq turns out to be something of a feminist. "Thirty years later he could not come to any other conclusion: women were indisputably better than men. They were gentler, more affectionate, more loving, and more compassionate, they were rarely violent, selfish, cruel or self-centred. Moreover, they were more rational, more intelligent and more hard-working. What on earth were men for? Michel wondered." Did you hear on the radio or read in the papers about the experiments that have been done whereby, as the result of some hitherto unknown ability of female eggs, female mice have been able to reproduce without males? Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.

In lots of ways, this was a marvellous book, intelligent, full of ideas, brilliantly structured and written. I am sure I will long remember it, but I wish I could be sure it would be on account of the ideas and not because, as it says blatantly on the cover, it is "filthy" (perhaps I am a bit puritanical, after all?)

Speaking of the cover, my last thought, was "Atomised" the right title? Carl posed a question about the translation of titles a little while ago, and I think the question is valid here. I see what was being got at, I think, that society was atomised by freewill instead of goodwill, but I don’t think the word is sufficiently current to convey as much meaning as necessary. All I could think of was that squirty perfume bottles are called "Atomisers". The original title was, I think, Elementary Particles, which is also what the book is called, I think, on the other side of the pond. I think I would have stuck to that. There is a discussion less than halfway through the book about the elements and the fact that "it was the existence of a finite list of chemical elements which had prompted Niels Bohr's first thoughts on the subject [of quantum mechanics]. There were lots of things that could be described as elementary – the elements themselves, the atom, sperm, love. I think I like that title better.

Well, I've written rather a lot about this one, but I thought it was worth it, though I would have liked to enjoy it more. Sometimes I had to read it with my eyes closed.
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Dec 08, 2012 Andrew added it

Shelves: french-language-fiction

Sometimes, when I was reading the Elementary Particles I felt like I was dancing around a bonfire, saluting the incumbent destruction of humanity.

Houellebecq's writing is like a telephoto lens, constantly zooming in on microscopic details (a childhood memory, the feeling of sand on bare skin, lurid-to-the-point-of-being-clinical sexual detail) and then zooming out to large-scale portrayals of modern life and how much everyone sucks. It reminded me at points of Louis-Ferdinand Céline (nihilism),...more

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Dec 03, 2012 Scott rated it 5 of 5 stars

If de Sade had a child with Darwin it would be this book. This was an enjoyable easy read which pulled few punches.

This book is about a world of alienation between its inhabitants. Like de Sade, this author creates a world where people take everything to extremes (especially sex) in order to feel alive. The lack of feeling and attachment throughout the novel is what leads us to want a new paradigm. IT IS US.

Houellebecq has hit hard at what he believes to be our problems. We are living in a wor...more

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Oct 17, 2012 Dani Schechtel rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Even though the idea is highly attractive, the French author gives away his uncapacity to cope with such a challenge he proposes himself to carry out. The intermingling of hard sciences with the most unpolitical demeanor of Man and the most crude essence of the Post-Modern Human ever represented in a single book is fairly interesting. However, the development of the narrative becomes predictable and reiterative. I love the disgustingly prolific account of Human Nature that can be read in Bruno's...more

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About Michel Houellebecq

Michel Houellebecq (born Michel Thomas), born 26 February 1958 (birth certificate) or 1956 on the French island of Réunion, is a controversial and award-winning French novelist. To admirers he is a writer in the tradition of literary provocation that reaches back to the Marquis de Sade and Baudelaire; to detractors he is a peddler of sleaze and shock. Having written poetry and a biography of the h...more

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Quotes from The Elementary Particles

“People often say that the English are very cold fish, very reserved, that they have a way of looking at things – even tragedy – with a sense of irony. There’s some truth in it; it’s pretty stupid of them, though. Humor won’t save you; it doesn’t really do anything at all. You can look at life ironically for years, maybe decades; there are people who seem to go through most of their lives seeing the funny side, but in the end, life always breaks your heart. Doesn’t matter how brave you are, how reserved, or how much you’ve developed a sense of humor, you still end up with your heart broken. That’s when you stop laughing. In the end there’s just the cold, the silence and the loneliness. In the end, there’s only death.” — 56 people liked it

“Love binds, and it binds forever. Good binds while evil unravels. Separation is another word for evil; it is also another word for deceit.” — 41 people liked it

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