Well, it seems there is hardly any point in contributing an other review here, when there are 88 reviews already on the site, and when so many people think "The Elementary Particles" is a "powerful," "unflinching" book.

I think it's weak: weaker than all of the models that the author attempts to emulate.

If you want genuine existential disorientation, read Sartre.
If you want intransigent, pithecoid hatred of the human condition, read Celine.
If you want a book that actually doesn't flinch in regarding death, try "Everyman."
If you want a protracted imaginative ventroliquism of motionless despair (like Michel's in this book), read "The Unnameable."
If you want raw, repetitive, compulsive, unsatisfying sexual excess, read de Sade. (Or Cathy Acker.)
If you want the thrill of a science-fiction ending in which humans are regarded as wonderful but primitive things of a happily discarded past, watch "Star Trek."

This is a pastiche of those authors, along with pinches of Sollers, Camus, and Artaud. The philosophizing asides are replete with clichés, and the supposedly astonishing scientific passages are clearly cobbled from popular magazines. If you find this novel shocking, you might consider just how immersed in the "endless middle classes" you really are: this kind of café existentialism is a trope of the middle class.

Houllebecq could write a strong novel, if he would allow himself to write the excoriating racist screeds that he attributes to one of his two principal characters. (A bet: I think he has written that kind of prose, but hasn't published it. Maybe he is also suffering from a bit of middle class timidity.) ( )

Another author in that very French intellectual tradition which seems to confuse being cynical with being profound. The basic thesis is that humans are risible and worthy of our hatred, and that interpersonal relationships are a despicable delusion. Some of this is illustrated with neatly-done set pieces, other parts are more didactic. The novel shows a consistent disgust for human bodies and sexuality which I thought rather juvenile.

There are some moments of wit, but in general the prose style is merely functional. I think this is supposed to be cleverly ‘scientific’ but I found it only uninteresting. ( )

I found this an outstanding book. It is not comfortable to read, but I can't think of a more incisive book I've read this decade (what does that mean?) . . . I don't have the words. I agree it's 'unmissable' as the hype says.

I've always been enthralled with the 1960s and all that went with it (though born in 1980), the cultural history certainly. This book made me revise that quite seriously (possibly at an appropriate time of my life).

It is unpleasant to agree with the ideas about western European society put forth here, as they are essentially negative. I couldn't disagree that they are put across very well however - and in a very accessible fashion.

Not because of any political slant, but because of the weight of ideas put forth, I can't think of it as anything but a good thing that a book like this became a bestseller. ( )

Wow, a small book with huge ideas. Some of the information was a little hard to grasp my head around. Most especially the scientific information about Michel's research. All in all, it was an okay book. It had a very depressing view on life: all humans go through life trying to find meaning, we find ways to fill the void through marriage,love, children. When in the end you can't ever escape the emptyness. :( ( )

Atomised is a beautifully-written treatment of one of the harshest messages in contemporary fiction.

It’s the story of half-brothers (their slatternly hippie mother is their common progenitor) who are formed by the emotional paucity of their upbringing (each of their fathers abandons them), but who turn out as polar opposites in many ways. Michel is a scientist; he’s reserved, emotionally cold – almost an automaton. Bruno, on the other hand, tries to assuage his wounds through rampant sex; although he’s drawn mercilessly as a sexual inadequate, he’s never the less obsessed with the act.

Houellebecq charts the lives of these two damaged specimens through a combination of conventional narrative and faux-scientific third-person analytic reportage, in which the two men are discussed in a tone usually reserved for fruit flies and vivisected rats.

But this is a powerful book. Although it’s hard to read at points – both for its brutal, ugly depictions of debased sexuality, and for its profound sadness – it rewards attention.

Atomised is the first draft of a suicide note for western civilization. I can only hope enough people read it with open eyes and minds in time to stave off its potential consummation. ( )