| View Larger Image | The Elementary Particles | Paperbackby Michel Houellebecq (Author), Frank Wynne (Author)
| List Price: | $14.95 | | Price: | $10.17 | | You Save: | $4.78 (32%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Vintage | | Page Count: | 272 Pages | | Publication Date: | November 13, 2001 | | Sales Rank: | 62,760nd |
|
FEATURES | - ISBN13: 9780375727016
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
|
EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
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 raucously promiscuous hedonist himself, while Michel is an emotionally dead molecular biologist wholly immersed in the solitude of his work. Each is ultimately offered a final chance at genuine love, and what unfolds is a brilliantly caustic and unpredictable tale.Translated from the French by Frank Wynne. |
Amazon.com Review
Bruno and Michel are half-brothers, born to a hippie mother who believed in following her bliss. As boys they live in ignorance of each other--at one point attending the same school without knowing of their blood connection. As grown men they're not truly close, but they occasionally phone each other late at night. Bruno's a hopeless sexual obsessive, often drunk or on his way there, and Michel's a molecular biologist, distant and inaccessible. Michel Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles follows these brothers through the latter half of the 20th century. Bruno and Michel are buffeted by history, vessels of disappointment and desire rocked by the ocean of time. Shuttled away to a boarding school where he's sexually abused by other boys, Bruno grows up full of twisted sexual longings and a contempt for aging women so palpable that at times it's stomach-churning. At a commune in the country, Bruno takes stock: The women were intolerable at breakfast, but by cocktail hour the mystical tarts were hopelessly vying with younger women once again. Death is the great leveler. On Wednesday afternoon he met Catherine, a fifty-year-old who had been a feminist of the old school. She was tanned, with dark curly hair; she must have been very attractive when she was twenty. Her breasts were still in good shape, he thought when he saw her by the pool, but she had a fat ass. Michel doesn't hate women; he doesn't even notice them. Instead of leering at bodies by the pool, he stares at particles in microscopes. He wins prizes for his experiments, but never experiences the rush of life. For both men, the damage has been done by history, by mother, before the story begins. What interests Houellebecq are the permutations and recapitulations of damage--the way the particles of the self can never be completely reconstituted. --Emily White |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 92 reviews)
|
Big, soft, goose down feathers ruffled by E. Schexnayder (Brooklyn, NY)  3 Stars
April 15, 2009
I must admit I'm shocked at the shock that seems to have arisen from this author's writings. I can only view this as arising from many individuals who haven't read much literature in their life or more suspect origins. It isn't particularly shocking in too many regards besides the unrelenting pathetic mood that pervades. I notice bleak is a common word used in reviews, but this isn't anywhere as bleak as anything by Beckett or even Camus for that matter. The sex is generally pornographic but it isn't anything as shocking or perverted as you'll find in Bret Easton Ellis or de Sade or Bataille or even most Harlequin romance novels' depictions of sex for that matter. On the whole, the sex becomes quite tedious, or more to the point, the constant desiring and search for it by the characters becomes quite tedious. The author's genius, as far as I can tell, lies in a combination of bleak genres of fiction (apocalyptic/distopian science fiction, subversive erotica, nihilism) cast in a very black comedic presentation. If these things are your cup of tea, then by all means, read. It's very entertaining at some points. And as far as ideas go, the equating of sex with capitalistic production and therefore its change into vastly more speculative realms of production and the inevitable, never ending quest to quench one's desires is far from original as well. Baudrillard talked about this as well as Lotringer and of course, Foucault. And contemporary society is essentially nihilistic - Nietzsche, Heidegger, Salinger, to name just 3 off the top of my head. It would seem then, that the "shock" mostly arose from the political positioning of a good number of French intellectuals and politicians to establish themselves as liberals, anti-racists, good moral ideologues, blah blah blah so as to win some votes and look justified in the eyes of the many. In short, their moral and political grandstanding has given this writer and his work much more weight than it has. And the allegations by various Muslim groups was very deftly handled by Mr. Rushdie in the UK's Guardian entitled "A Platform for Closed Minds" so I won't comment too much on that. All I'll say in this regard is that people with paper thin skins get bruised and cut very easily, often for no real reason.
Of course, if you are unfamiliar with any of these ideas or concerns, please read. It's a good, entertaining introduction. A sort of "Nihilism for Dummies" if you will. And before you dismiss this as just a bad joke on my part, it's more truth than fiction. The "... for Dummies" series is also very well written with a repetitive tone sprinkled with important information for the reader with often sensationalist means of engagement couched in informal language. Sound familiar?
I mean, a future world solely populated by technically self-reproducing women (sorry for spoiling the gripping ending) which are in effect the central character's (possibly the author's) grandmother? That is just plain...sweet :)
| |
I was bored, so I read this by DK (Iowa City, IA) 3 Stars
March 06, 2009
This book is a little long and drawn out for my taste and despite the good parts it can definitley leave you feeling a little blue by the end. The story telling is very discreptive and you get the feeling that the main characters are very "real"; however it all ends a little sadly for me to enjoy that much. I'm not saying I wouldn't reccomend it, I'm just saying it's not for the faint of heart. Whatever you do don't buy this book for sensitive friends or relatives who are offended by racism, sexual content, or the French in general.
| |
Painfully relevant... by C. Robert Broerse (St.Catharines, ON.)  5 Stars
January 08, 2009
I found this book to be the most haunting work of modern literature I have read in the past several years. Houellebecq's writing is direct, his story unfolds over several decades, revealing the emotional and psychological rifts arising in our society. He is outspoken, he criticizes the 60's Sexual Revolution, indicating it has further alienated people, exacerbating eros and intimacy between the sexes. In our digital era, this book is the more frightening in that people rely more and more on technology to create bonds and 'establish' relationships.
Sex and science - two half-brothers live their lives in conflict with their times, their family histories, connected with fragility to the same mother. Bruno is addicted to sex; Michel is asexual. Where Bruno finds himself trying to heal his past through finding release in sex, Michel want to find peace in science, in creating a new form of humankind.
The story is both tragic and hopeful. Houellebecq is unapologetic, viewing the human species as largely selfish and insecure, devoid of true altruism and kindness. The book predicts a future I myself would love to see. One will definitely find parallels in this book to that of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (the latter's novel is referenced in 'The Elementary Particles').
This book is astonishing. I read it several weeks ago and still cannot forget it. If you want to understand or feel the pulse of the present era, this book will you give excellent insight into the spiritual malaise and confusion of our world. Whereas newspapers and the media have constructed vignettes of what life is like everyday, this book will prove to be more revealing about our time. It will most likely be read by generations to come.
| |
thought provoking by Ig (Brooklyn, NY United States) 5 Stars
November 13, 2008
I started reading this on a plane ride to Europe. I had to put it down every 15-20 minutes, simply to think about what he was saying. Sometimes I would agree, sometimes not, and sometimes I would simply be impressed with his writing. Good book.
| |
A Bizarre Book by Jane Grimes (Perth, Western Australia)  4 Stars
June 11, 2008
This is one of the weirdest and most unsettling books I have ever read.
Some people will find it highly offensive while others may love its sexual
candour. I liked reading this book but there was one plot line which
really scared and disturbed me. I could not read this book again.
Once was enough. I found the ending to be ridiculous and absolutely
off the wall.
John
| |
SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| Platform
by Michel Houellebecq (Author), Frank Wynne (Author)
In his new work, Michel Houellebecq combines erotic provocation with a terrifying vision of a world teetering between satiety and fanaticism, to create one of the most shocking, hypnotic, and intelligent novels in years.
In his early forties, Michel Renault skims through his days with as little human contact as possible. But following his father’s death he takes a group holiday to Thailand where he meets a travel agent—the shyly compelling Valérie—who begins to bring this...
| 
| The Possibility of an Island (Vintage International)
by Michel Houellebecq (Author), Gavin Bowd (Translator)
A worldwide phenomenon and the most important 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.
Surprisingly poignant, philosophically compelling, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, The Possibility of an Island is at once an indictment, an elegy, and a celebration of everything we have and are at risk of losing. It is a masterpiece from one of the world’s...
| 
| Whatever
by Michel Houellebecq (Author)
Just thirty, with a well-paid job, depression and no love life, the narrator and anti-hero par excellence of this grim, funny and clever novel smokes four packs of cigarettes a day and writes weird animal stories in his spare time. A computer programmer by day, he is tolerably content, until, that is, he's packed off with a colleague - the unimaginably ugly, sexually-frustrated virgin Raphael Tisserand - to train provincial civil servants in the use of a new computer system. This is a painfully...
| 
| The Butcher: And Other Erotica
by Alina Reyes (Author), David Watson (Translator)
This book couples The Butcher, a shocking, poetic, and sensual portrayal of an intense summer love affair, with Reyes' second novella Lucie's Long Voyage, which also features her irresistible blend of sensual earthiness and dreamlike imagery. "Nothing short of staggering . . . an erotic tour de force."--The London Standard.
| 
| Atomised
by Michel Houellebecq (Author)
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....
|
|
|
