"The Possibility of an Island" - Michel Houellebecq

It's a good book. [I]The Elementary Particles [/I]and [I]Whatever[/I] weren't bad either, but this one is pretty damn special. I doubt, however, that it would be popular enough to be selected for the Book Club. He may be transgressive in his own way, but Houellebecq's much harder to get into than Chuck. The constant references to Schopenhauer and humorless ranting, for instance, don't make for the kind of reading that your average Chuckster will devour. I read this book in the original French and I'm not sure what the translation is like, but if it's anything like the French, it's accessible enough but long-winded and occasionally dense.
The guy thinks highly of himself, and so does his narrator. The incessant cynicism and pornographic digressions can get on your nerves, but if you can get past the whole "it's so very French" thing, you'll enjoy it. Houellebecq isn't exactly a fantastic novelist; his characters seem insipidly conceived to the point where you wonder why he doesn't just write essays for a living. That's what he's good at --- essay writing. His women characters are usually either caring but old and ugly, or highly sexual and empty-headed. His protagonists are nearly identical in every novel. There's a definite Houellebecq formula, and I think he's perfected it in [I]The Possibility of an Island.[/I]
I look forward to seeing if he's going to evolve as a writer. He's adored outside of France, but the French critics usually loathe him.