This is a dark and in several places disgusting book - of course that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’ve always appreciated an artist that tells the truth, even when the truth is a despicable feeling or opinion or action. Houellebecq’s reputation most certainly precede him, so I expected something of this sort from this book. But there still was a scene towards the end of the book (those who read it know the one) that had me tense with anxiety, feeling the vertigo one feels when dealing with an artist and an art work where you truly don’t know what will happen next. However you might criticize this book as grumpy, depressive, narcissistic, the fact that the writer could incite that kind of reaction speaks to the power of his book. One thing I will always respect is a powerful work of art.

But, this book is kind of annoying, and the person we are forced to listen to for it’s duration is empty, occasionally boring, detestable, and nihilistic. He can’t even bring himself to hate others, despite his pitiful state, even hate requires too much energy to muster. Strangely it didn’t become clear to me that this is a memoir of depression and specifically antidepressants until the very end, when it is explicitly stated. I think I was too blinded by the narrators identity as a well-off, well-educated, cologne scented yuppie to pity him in any meaningful way, though to be fair he also seems blinded himself but the very same things. He is, however in a pitiful state. The medication he takes is something like a hidden main character, possibly contributing to the course of the plot as much as any kind of desire or will on the part of our narrator.

As someone who has struggled with depression and also taken medication to “treat” it, I sympathize with the idea that Houellebecq seems to be putting forward here: our world and society has degenerated to a point where depression and induced mental illness is almost endemic. We need medication to carry on, to “treat” our (in many cases, well founded) melancholia and various anxieties. Yet in this medicated state we are neutered (literally and spiritually) and though our suffering is deadened so are so many of the other stimulations that make up a life. The novel presents us with two options: a violent death in the search for a cause, or withering away in a stifled, stunted state. ( )

I am so glad to have finished this book! One of the grimmest I have ever read. I had been putting off reading Houellebecq after a recommendation of over a decade old, putting it off out of a presentiment of danger. This presentiment was not unfounded—indeed, were I to surrender to the vision of this text, I would be in danger.
The even pace of the prose swallows some seriously disturbing content. Is a claim to verisimilitude enough? While pessimism and bleakness are common in literature (why), particularly contemporary literature, this is an exemplar. The narrator’s outlook is so dispiriting. And that, I reckon, is the point.
Having said all that, I did laugh at certain points throughout the book. There might have been a different reading accessible to me, had I conceptualized the book as satire. ( )

Ein schwächeres Buch vom Autor, für meinen Geschmack zu existentialistisch. ( )

Can you imagine this book written by someone who grew up in America? Ha it is so so so so much worse here. ( )

Florent, a middle-aged agronomist, is fed up; his career is going nowhere and his young girlfriend detests him. He decides to simply walk out on his life and disappear but, before he does so, he gets a prescription for an anti-depressant that will boost his serotonin and, hopefully, relieve his depression.

In the course of his disappearing, Florent returns to memories of a happier part of his life, when he enjoyed two close relationships with beautiful women, and also with a male friend from his college days, Aymeric. He visits the latter at his Normandy farm, to find that his life is in not much better shape.

This is a pretty dark account of depressed lives progressing grimly on an unhappy path. It is not easy reading. It also contains graphic descriptions of bestiality and paedophilia; this is not a book for the squeamish.

( )