SOURCE: Lilla, Mark. “Houellebecq's Elementary Particles.” NPQ: New Perspectives Quarterly 18, no. 1 (winter 2001): 53-60.

In the following essay, Lilla discusses the French critical reaction to The Elementary Particles and how it relates to the era of the fin de siecle.

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...