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Loading... La Possibilité d'une îleby Michel Houellebecq
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. nwhyte | Aug 3, 2008 |  1   Houellebecq is *so* bleak. I think that he should have a preface similar to South Park: "This material is not suitable for anybody" (  )dvf1976 | Apr 24, 2008 | 1 Bof... that's my final rating. It was my second reading of Michel Houellebecq, I'm bit a disappointed compared to his excellent book about H.P. Lovecraft. The story in "La Possibilité d'une île" is a mix of hyper-reality with a touch of cheap science-fiction and a strong tendency to talk about a minimal sexuality. Next time, I'll read one of his previous book, they should be better... My second negative review. I should read other reviews before buying books ;-) (  )adulau | Apr 6, 2008 | I feel sorry for Michel Houellebecq. One long despairing suicide note about the impossibility of finding love (or rather the impossibility of having sex with young chicks without paying for it once your past the age of 45.) From this premise Houellebecq (or the narrator, Daniel1 and Daniel25) comes to the conclusion that humanity and the universe is worthless and to escape the pain and cruelty of existence, oblivion is the only solution. Still it's a good read, illuminated with moments of cynical and pitch black humour. (  )georgematt | Sep 1, 2007 | 1 Not entirely finished yet, but this is definitely another worthy addition to Houellebecq's idiosyncratic catalogue. As usual, a grim view on a Western Civilization past and present and even grimmer view on its' future. (  )bemike | Aug 1, 2007 | 0.071 seconds to build listing  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0307263495, Hardcover)A worldwide phenomenon and the most famous French novelist since Camus, Michel Houellebecq now delivers his magnum opus—a tale of our present circumstances told from the future, when humanity as we know it has vanished. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:24 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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I was rather bracing myself for this one, given Houellebecq's reputation for misanthropy and, well, nastiness. But it wasn't anything like as bad as I had feared it might be.
True, the protagonist is very unpleasant; a contemporary French comedian who employs a certain ambiguity in whether he is mocking or practising misogyny, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. But the plot turns out to be about his unintended involvement in the setting up of a new religion, and its reverberations centuries later when humanity has been largely replaced by enhanced clones. (Or has it? - seems to me one of the implicit questions, especially given the epilogue exploring the future world in a little more detail.)
I still didn't especially like this book, but I thought it tapped into a lot of interesting ideas and literary precedents, and there were sufficient hints that the author and narrator are different people with different views that I was not utterly appalled. (