SOURCE: Daniell, Steven. Review of Plateforme, by Michel Houellebecq. World Literature Today 76, nos. 3-4 (summer-autumn 2002): 110.

In the following review, Daniell offers a positive assessment of Plateforme, which he finds “entertaining and insightful” despite its offensiveness.

Michel Houellebecq's third novel, Plateforme, looks at a society that is becoming devoid of meaning. As the story unfolds, it becomes apparent that this emptiness threatens not only materialistic Westerners but also the anticapitalist forces desperately trying to forestall globalization, especially in the name of religious or political ideology.

The novel centers around Michel, a forty-year-old exhibits agent for the French Ministry of Culture. In the opening chapter, he must deal with his father's murder by the brother of Aïcha, the father's young Muslim girlfriend. The facts surrounding the murder seem a curiosity at the time; however, the two primary motifs for the text sex and violence, emerge from the crime.

Though...