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Dec 07, 2008

RandomAnthony rated it:

I don't know. This is one of those books that really seemed to be multiple books. Here are three of them:

1. This book is partly the product of a guy who read too much Celine and wants to talk about girls' asses. There's a nihilistic streak in which the narrator asserts that nothing matters but fucking, and getting old is the worst thing that could happen ever, and anybody who says anything against that are just fooling themselves. FOOLING THEMSELVES. While a few of the rantings More...

6 comments like (18 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Jason rated it:

(Full review can be found at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

So before anything else, let's just get this out of the way: that if you aren't horrendously and profoundly offended at least once by the work of controversial French author Michel Houellebecq, you're not paying close enough attention. Because Houellebecq, see, is what's known as a misanthrope; that far from being a racist, or a sexist, or a homophobe, he simply hates the entirety of hum More...

2 comments like (11 people liked it)

Jun 10, 2011

Margot rated it:

"Qui sait ce qu'est le vrai bonheur, je ne parle pas de ce mot si galvaudé mais de cette terreur nue. Même aux âmes esseulées, il apparaît voilé. Et les plus tristes d'entre nous en gardent toujours un souvenir ou une illusion." Joseph Conrad

La dernière chose à laquelle je m'attendais en lisant les trente premières pages de ce livre, c'est que je lui attribuerais quatre étoiles. Mais la vérité est là j'ai vraiment aimé ce livre. C'est mon premier Houellebecq; ne sachant tro More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Dec 19, 2011

Michael rated it:

I was recently in a class where the teacher was talking about how "meaning" is derived from literature through subtext. Most literature in the past generated subtext in opposition to cultural norms or censorship imposed by the author or society. A classic example might be Hemingway's story "Hills like White Elephants," which deals with abortion only subtextually because stories about abortion were simply not written at the time.

So the question becomes: In a soc More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 09, 2010

Rhonda rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 04, 2011

Ben rated it:

Do you want to live forever? Most people would say yes. I have to confess immortality tempts me as well. But as with most wishes, this one needs conditionals and caveats to make it truly comfortable. After all, you wouldn't want to be immortal but keep ageing, right? And being immortal alone would really suck, watching everyone else grow old and die as you remain the same. There are basically two ways to solve the ageing problem: either find a way to stop the body from ageing, or find a wa More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 17, 2008

Josh rated it:

It came as no surprise when I discovered Michel Houellebecq is an H.P. Lovecraft fan; while lacking the Providence gentleman's penchant for probing the dark corners of the universe and the horrors that lurk therein, Houellebecq shares the same, pessimistic view of the universe and humanity's place in it. We are, more or less, a mistake and everything we do, think and are is ultimately inconsequential and devoid of meaning.

The Possibility of an Island is often referred to as Houelleb More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 11, 2007

Daniel rated it:

The first great novel of the twenty-first century written by the only writer living today who really matters. Houellebecq in the year 2005 did what Aldous Huxley did in Brave New World in 1932..., except that Houellebecq's characters are so much more well-defined, real and wacky...(utterly our age...)...
This novel, like "Les Particules Elementaires" goes off on crazy philosophical tangents in which the narractive stream of the novel disappears and we are subjected to b More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 02, 2008

TS rated it:

Well executed. But basically this is Dostoyevskian anti-hero with a lapsed viagra prescription meets Oryx and Crake. A nihilist Eurotrash's memoir told before and after an apocalypse. The end was quite underwhelming, vegetative shall we say. This depressing story effectively depicts the malaise of male middle age, sexual insecurities, selfishness. None of the characters seemed to achieve any sense of redemption or growth- perhaps his last girlfriend, the impossibly beautiful nymphette Esthe More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 07, 2008

Heather rated it:

well. this is the first time i've felt stumped at the prospect of giving a review. as mentioned earlier, this book gave me weird sex dreams. there is a lot of straight sex, and the (original) protagonist is quite the prick, pun intended. but he's an astute prick, and so this book is full of many wry, poignant and philosophical observations.

thus i kept going, despite his propensity to ramble...i mean *seriously* ramble. i don't know the last time i skimmed so much.

the mix More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Aug 14, 2007

anne rated it:

Overall, I thought this was a waste of my time. I've read all his books, and I'm not exactly sure why at this point, other than that he's French and controversial, so therefore I should like him. This one was probably better than his others (I especially liked his relationship with his dog, Marie, and the final scenes as he goes off alone), but I still think Houellebecq's rather untalented as a writer relative to his fame, and his ideas aren't particularly interesting to me. As a public figure, More...

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Jan 11, 2011

Mangoo rated it:

Quarta incarnazione del punto di vista di Houellebecq sulla vita e sul mondo, inferiore a "Les particules" ma migliore di "Plateforme".
Si ricollega al suo secondo romanzo con l'attuazione di quella immortalità che il fratello geniale della coppia aveva architettato. Qui l'immortalità è il pretesto per una lunga serie di considerazioni, sul cui sfondo si staglia, sempre più insistentemente sebbene mai esplicitamente avanzando nella lettura, l'idea di eterno ritorno dell'uguale More...

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Feb 09, 2012

Joseph rated it:

Brutally funny, this novel pulls no punches on the human condition. While reading, I was consistently reminded of California poet Robinson Jeffer's doctrine of inhumanism, which seeks to remove the human from the center of the epistemology of the world, and place it back on the edges, as just another element in the playroom of Nature. Houllebecq likewise makes very serious play of humanity and its self-obsessions, which he portrays as the cause of the ultimate destruction of the Natural world. More...

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Feb 01, 2012

Liviu rated it:

I plan to have a full review on FBC soon so a few points;

it is very sfnal as an alternate narrative from Daniel 1, an aging comedian and Daniel 24 and Daniel 25, his future genetic descendants in a post apocalyptic future a few millenia down the road and the author shows once again why (like Daniel 1 who is a very controversial comedian too) any of his novels will be sure to get the establishment riled, the pc crowd baying for his blood (after Platform, they tried him in France, home More...

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Oct 01, 2011

Mark rated it:

There’s a shock at first, with the complete lack of any sign of affection, ‘respect’ for others, attention to the verities of romance etc. But you get used to it: and frankly, such an attitude of having no respect for social pretenses does work to make you re-think the world around you.

One of the things I really liked was that the pitiless and heartless view is turned on everything: the Art World, Politics, Business, the media world. The book (publ 2005 in English translation) effortl More...

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Sep 28, 2011

Patrick rated it:

Michel Houllebecq's novel, The Possibility of An Island, is essentially a futuristic dystopian fable not unlike Cormac McCarthy's The Road or the film Children of Men. At first, I thought the idea of Houllebecq writing a Sci-Fi novel seemed not only implausible but also tedious. In actuality, he has stuck to most of his broad and challenging themes from earlier novels: youth, beauty, sex, regret, suffering, aging, death. However, he seems to have lost his sense of humor, this novel is missing hi More...

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Jul 28, 2011

Derek rated it:

All of Houellebecq's books that I have read are as much concerned with philosophy - in the widest sense - as with narrative. This is no exception, and it makes some important points very well on subjects like commoditization, the cult of youth, the pointlessness of organised religion, and so on. The parallel narrative set partly in the present day and partly 2000 years into the future (and it's a bleak one!) is interesting too. And yet, somehow, it doesn't entirely gel satisfactorily. There is s More...

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May 15, 2011

Bob rated it:

Could perhaps be subtitled "The Impossibility of Love": like Elementary Particles, the central character is a disenchanted, somewhat misanthropic middle-aged Frenchman whose mind is rarely not on getting much younger women into bed. This is in many respects a philosophical novel, but too much science fiction and garden-variety sex costs you points in the high-brow literary fiction market (outré sex, à la Story of The Eye, has more heft). Ultimately Houellebecq uses the idea of cloning More...

1 comment like

Apr 26, 2011

John rated it:

After something of a sputtering with Platform, Houellebecq is in high form here with Possibility of an Island. He admitted himself that Platform was a failure partially because the idea behind Possibility was clunking around in his head as he wrote Platform. That's interesting . . .

This book has a number of high marks. Houellebecq isn't thought of as a sci-fi writer, but his science fiction scenarios have a quiet elegance to them, a sort of foreboding and sense of inevitability. In More...

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Jan 30, 2011

Tancredi rated it:

Audace, controverso, coraggioso romanzo. "La possibilità di un'isola" è un Houellebcq finalmente libero, a briglie sciolte, che può finalmente superare se stesso. Leggendo prima questo romanzo e poi il precedente "Le particelle elementari" ho avuto l'impressione che in quest'ultimo vi fossero dei temi e delle idee implicite, accennate, e che finalmente vengono sviluppate. "Le particelle elementari" si era chiuso con uno strano finale fantascientifico: adesso la fant More...

0 comments like

Oct 18, 2010

Nathan rated it:

This was almost a science fiction novel, set in the present, paralleled with vignettes in the future when a religion based on unbridled carnality and technology has created conditions for which "neohumans" can exist eternally as repeated versions of former humans. The prevailing depravity of the human impulse to destroy derails the possibility that this experience can offer mankind, or its newest iteration, any kind of joy. (Swing and a miss, technology.) The novel is structured with a More...

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Jan 25, 2010

Maggie rated it:

I came at this book expecting it to be in the genre of sciencey, philosophical, post modern brain-candy fiction. This was all based on the cover, and the fact that I knew the author had also written a book entitled "The Elementary Particles". I should know not to form expectations based on such things, but I did anyway. And it was a good effort on Houellebecq's part too. I am not, not, not a hard-core science-fiction fan, but I was amused, intrigued. Especially at the last chapter, whi More...

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Aug 24, 2009

Stephen rated it:

In certain ways, this novel picks up and develops a theme suggested in Houellebecq's earlier novel "Elementary Particles" (also translated as "Atomized"): human existence is so fraught with suffering and frustration that the only hope is in some "post-human" society. Here, though, the nihilism goes further, for there is not much hope for post-humans either. "The Possibility of an Island" takes place in two time periods. The base story, that of Daniel 1, More...

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May 23, 2011

Justin rated it:

On the evidence of this book, Houllebecq is the most advanced author of the 21st century. Not advanced like advanced algebra, which is harder and more useful and more interesting than basic algebra; not like a martial artist who's advanced and just much better than a beginner. He's advanced the way a disease is advanced, particularly a disease that causes pustules to break out all over your body before filling your lungs with bile.

The conceit of this novel is that a new species is c More...

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Aug 17, 2009

Mazel rated it:

Le pitch ? Quel pitch ?

Il est impossible d’en dévoiler un. Le quatrième roman de Michel Houellebecq, par son ampleur, ses ambitions, sa façon bien à lui de déjouer tout pronostic, échappe à cette pratique paresseuse de la critique moderne. Alors qu’en dire ?

Dire que les éditeurs étrangers les plus importants (US, Grande-Bretagne, Allemagne, Italie, Espagne, Suède, Japon…), l’ont lu sur manuscrit et aussitôt acheté.

Dire aussi qu’ils n’ont pas été avares de com More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 23, 2011

Gene rated it:

I picked this up at the Agincourt library. I used go to the French section at Robarts and skim through Houellebecq novels and novellas whenever I was feeling bored or annoyed. I liked how characters walk around thinking offensive thoughts about other people. I picked up a French copy of The Elementary Particulars in a bookshop near the Sorbonne in Paris, and tried to read it for a while, feeling sophisticated all the while. But this book really sucked. It was awful. The main character wades into More...

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Dec 05, 2010

Amanda rated it:

Ugh. Ok. Well, I did enjoy the end of the book, and I guess it's well written, but the majority of the book is just... bleh. i get that he's trying to show the patheticness of humanity, and that the narrator is a pathetic charecter and unreliable narrator whose misguidedness is part of the point, but that doesn't change the fact that he's such an unpleasant tool! And with none of the charm of a Scarlett O'Hara to even make it fun! It's just about this man who is a crass jerk who thinks all More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 24, 2009

Russell rated it:

Michel Houellebecq's take on "A Brave New World" in which he describes a future dystopia and how it got there through the eyes of a modern day human and his clone 2000 years from now.

I loved the modern day stuff but found the future clone dreary. We don't always need a sexless rationalist contrast to really understand the other hedonistic angst-filled character. The last third of the book was too science fiction-y.

Houellebecq really hits his stride though the m More...

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Aug 03, 2011

Luke rated it:

Probably the most fully realized and delivered of all the Houellebecq existential tomes; there is actually a definitive context of story to be told. Though the narrative falls short at times under the lethargic staple of his graphic sensuality, the lasting impact of the whole is five-star Houellebecq. This will sit on top of my thoughts for quite sometime.

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 26, 2009

Michael rated it:

It's easy to revile Houellebecq, and I don't think I'd recommend this book to anyone who's not in the market for a depressing trip, without any hopeful rays of sunshine, but that being said, I'm glad I've read it, and I think I'll read more of his work. Here, Houellebecq's narrator is not so much sexist, as hopelessly lost about sex, and obsessed with sex and attractiveness and youth. Women have such an enormous power over him that he can feel fulfilled in no other way than (and he uses this p More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

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