SOURCE: Rubin, Merle. “A Perfect Genetic Future.” Christian Science Monitor 92, no. 240 (2 November 2000): 21.

In the following review, Rubin asserts that The Elementary Particles functions as a provocative “jeremiad” but finds flaws in its implausible premise and dialogue.

A literary sensation in France, hailed as a great novel by critics in the rest of Europe, Michel Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles is an odd mixture of penetrating insight and old-fashioned ineptitude.

Although critics have compared its author to Balzac, Beckett, and Camus, it is no more a literary masterpiece than Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Like Huxley's social prophecy, this is a novel that tackles big, life-changing ideas. But unlike Huxley's masterfully conceived vision of a prosperous, blandly hedonistic world governed by genetic and social engineering, the vision of the future that Houellebecq presents is poorly conceived: so full of holes, you could drive several small planets through them.

The unknown...