Rating: 
Summary: And in the end, who care?
Review: I'm getting more and more amazed at what passes for important literature these days. In the end, Houllebecq has absolutely nothing original to say about the modern human condition. His characters are half-blown portraits of people who the reader really could not care less about. And his attack on the later half of the 20th century...while I agree with him, please tell me something I don't know already? What a waste of time
Rating: 
Summary: urgent literary peckings
Review: This book reads like literature, the kind of urgent literature that only Francophone sentences can produce, and this is a stunning feat considering it was full of both near pornographic sex and near phoney science. The utopia/dystopia of sex and of the promise attendant to unraveling of genetic code is well combined with clinical descriptions of failure, and the effect of describing human failures and shortcomings with clinical detachment is a technique that serves the book well and also makes it quintessentially French, which besides being the most beautiful language is also one of the meanest. (One of the best passages I have read in a modern work in a long time compares a man who takes up writing to a pigeon pecking on the ground even when starving and without birdseed on the ground.) The end is a great, great gamble that pays off--and while the reader may be tempted to consider ethical, moral, and even spiritual ramifications, she would do well to first consider literary ones, for the literary achievement is stunning. It is a delight to read a novel which as soon as one finishes one thinks, "I'm glad I finished, I HAD to read that." If it made a noise in France, the noise was deserved.
Rating: 
Summary: Fuss about what?
Review: Maybe I'm missing the point. Maybe something fundamental was lost in the translation. Maybe I was sold a first draft by mistake.Elementary Particles is a slow, dull, boring, over-rated waste of time. I gave it two stars because I managed to finish it - but it was a struggle. The style is described by some reviewers as 'refreshingly straightforward'. Actually it breaks all the fundamental rules or writing and suffers because of it. It seems that the author has dreamed up a simplistic theory and has tried to prove it by pulling lines (usually out of context) from all the great philosophers. Some of his sex scenes appear to be written just to shock, and might well have appeared in the seedier adverts in a glamour mag. I honestly don't know what the fuss was all about. The only character I empathised with was Bruno, one of the half brothers. His search for uninvolved sex is fairly typical of a lot of men of his age. Otherwise, characterization was shallow and left me with a sort of empty feeling - like I'd met nobody on a long journey. Sorry M. Houellebecq, but this one wasn't for me.
Rating:
Summary: Disturbingly bad
Review: Finishing this book took great courage. Mired in pornographic imagery and shallow philosophy (I have not seen the word "ontology" so badly misused--maybe it was the translation?), I found the conclusion to be an insult. How can Houellebecq offer us the slightest hint of redemption? Maybe, in fact, I am missing the brilliant point here. Maybe I should give it five stars. Maybe he is saying, "Look, I despair of this trash I just wrote as much as you. I cannot stay out of the gutter. Shattered bits of philosophy jangle around in my head. How else am I to dispose of them? Forgive me, and accept my apologies for I am part of a doomed gender, a doomed species." In either case, the end result is pathetic. Some fools will proclaim this to be "art." I'm afraid, then, contrary to what a reviewer before me offered, that the bar has been lowered, not raised.
Rating: 
Summary: More accurately 4.5 stars
Review: The further I get from this book the better it seems. Upon completion I was pretty distraught, which I consider to be a good thing. Perhaps it has something to do with me being a molecular biologist myself. The book is honest and realistic and hence comes off as depressing. The most refreshing thing, however, was Monsieur Houellebecq's writing style - straightforward - which seems to be a rarity these days.
Rating:
Summary: A celebration to current humanity that eliminated death
Review: The prologue explains what the book is about and the epilogue confirms it: It is a celebration of current humanity (circa 2050) that had enough sense to genetically engineer itself out of existence and to leave in its place an all female, genetically enhanced, immortal, asexual, superspecies. The scientific foundation for this startling transformation came from Michel, one of the two half brothers who are the central, though uninteresting, unsympathetic, pathetic, characters of the book. I almost wrote novel, which would have been wrong. It is not a novel in the sense of a story with a beginning, middle, and end, rising action, conflicts that are resolved etc. Instead, it is more like a research report on the history of the biological revolution that abolished death. It may not be a novel, but it is literature, a new type of literature packed with ideas and imagination and accurately describilng a certain set of contemporary French people who are truly pitiable. Elementary particles has been a best seller in France and has been the biggest literary sensation there since Francoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse. Defects: the sex is mechanical and tired, the look at modern society too harsh, and the plot too crammed with whatever Houellebecq had researched. The main defect is the main asset, Dostoevsky's invariable flaw, tendentiousness, for that is what has provoked the controversies. Contrasted with the realities of modern life, however, in these dog days, the story is as tame as a holiday postcard. Read it to get a feeling for the current ennui that afflicts the French, whose same problems are also spelled out in detail and with pretty much the same estrogenized solution by Valery Giscard d'Estaiang, former President of the Republic, in his essay entitled Les Francais, reflexions sur le destin d'un peuple.
Rating:
Summary: Pure drivel
Review: This book is juvenile nonsense disguised as a "challenging" work. The author seems to have attempted to cram into the plot whatever he has researched on the subject of religion, philosophy and physics and has wound it together with a disjointed and extremely dull litany of sexual encounters. The book describes the misadventures of two half-formed characters, each of whom elicits no sympathy or interest from the reader. And to top it off, the novel finishes with an absurd sort of science fiction. It really is awful. I only finished it to find out what all the fuss is about and am still surprised that others were so easily duped into believing that this is important literature. Finally, it's also not hilarious as others have said - just desperate.
Rating:
Summary: bound to upset somebody...
Review: In Houellebecq's _The Elementary Particles_, Bruno and Michel are brothers. They were born to the same mother but different fathers. Their mom was a 1960s sexually liberated hippie. Raised by different grandmothers, they are somewhat getting to know one another as adults, although they keep a distance on purpose. Bruno seems to be more like the average guy. He was married, but more or less describes his ex-wife as a sex object. He's gone through a midlife crisis. He visits sex clubs with his current girlfriend, where they both have sex with friendly strangers. Bruno had a hair transplant. He likes to look sexy. Michel is a molecular biologist. He's more or less asexual. He thinks very mechanically about possibilities. Nevertheless, he's very sad about many a thing. Such is the way of life. At times, things go so poorly for these guys that the novel must be read as 1) extremely tragic 2) comic or 3) absurd. The Elementary Particles is a novel about how Bruno and Michel live, and cope, or don't cope. A theme here seems to be that they are unable to be happy, because in this world, with society as it is, love is not possible, only sex. And sex goes to the beautiful, the rich, the powerful, etc. It seems that Houellebecq says that the sexual revolution is responsible, and we have breakdown of the family, an oversexed, crude society, and many unhappy people because we can't get what we want, not sex (most of us, anyway) and surely not love. Of course anytime you blame ANYTHING of society's ills on the sexual revolution, you're bound to upset somebody. Houellebecq's prose is crisp and clear, and with the novel so steeped in philosophy, there are bound to be echoes of Camus, especially with a French author. But I think The Elementary Particles stands rather well on its own. The philosophy isn't presented alongside the plot as an afterthought; the book really works as a whole, a well-told story encompassing and promoting certain themes which are laid bare throughout, without the book becoming boring or silly. Houllebecq is capable of writing (what I think are) very beautiful passages, will you take a look at this one: "At night Michel dreamed of abstract snow-covered spaces- his body, bandaged from head to foot, drifting beneath lowering skies between steel mills." And at times, perhaps nobody else agrees with me on this one, Les Particules Elementaries is FUNNY. Laugh out loud funny I think it is, and a hoot. Bruno visits a hippie camp where various actitivies and classes go on. Yoga, self-realization, and whatnot. We should think he's there just to find a woman with whom he can have sex. The author's descriptions of Bruno's attempts to converse with women are masterful. Bruno is pathetic and common, and his attempts will mean a great deal to any man who tries without success to talk to women. Descriptions of the instructors and the other participants, through Bruno's eyes, made me laugh so hard I cried. Readers repulsed by the themes in The Elementary Particles have every right to criticize Houellebecq on historical/cultural and philosophical grounds. I'm not qualified to make such criticisms. I think he's written a very good novel, though. M is certainly no Camus, but perhaps he is the next best thing from the 1990s...
Rating:
Summary: Deep Thoughts by Jacque Houllebecq
Review: In this hilarious criticism of the modern condition, M.H. takes a penetrating look at the supposedly shattered culture left in the wake of the "Bobo" generation's ascendance. Virtually every page of this book offers the reader tasty food for thought. I would consider that the hallmark of a great novel. In attempting to provide us with a snapshot of the times, M.H. instead offers the experiences of the kind of people most of us can't recognize nor can truly relate to. Nevertheless, the characters are sexy, stirring and do draw you in deeply. I found The Elementary Particles to be extremely clever and funny despite it's underlying melancholic tone. Men between 20-40 would get the most out of this book.
Rating:
Summary: Frieda
Review: I love reading books from foreign authors especially French writers. This book is very different. It's extremely frank and gives a lot of food for thought. If you like just a good story this book is not for you but if you like reading good literature and love digesting every sentence as you read... then buy this one. It make you think about it for a long time.
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