Volume 47, Number 19 · November 30, 2000
Night Thoughts
By Mark Lilla
The Elementary Particles
by Michel Houellebecq, Translated from the French by Frank Wynne
Knopf, 264 pp., $25.00
Whatever
by Michel Houellebecq, Translated from the Frenchby Paul Hammond
London: Serpent's Tail, 155 pp., $14.99 (paper)
Rester vivant et autres textes
by Michel Houellebecq
Paris: Librio, 93 pp., FF10
H.P. Lovecraft: Contre le monde, contre la vie
by Michel Houellebecq
Paris: Editions J'ai lu, 154 pp., FF89
Bruno and Michel—the main characters of The Elementary Particles—are half-brothers but did not meet until their teens. Their mother, Janine, abandoned them when they were infants, dropping them into the laps of aging grandparents. A beautiful French girl, she was too busy living her own life to be bothered with husband or children. In the late Fifties she could be seen on the Riviera running with the crowd made famous by the films of Roger Vadim and Brigitte Bardot. In the early Sixties she was still in the avant-garde, having abandoned St. Tropez to follow a guru to California, where she changed her name to Jane. Between their abandonment and her death the sons hardly saw her.
Review, 4415 words
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