SOURCE: Besser, Gretchen Rous. Review of Les Particules élémentaires, by Michel Houellebecq. French Review 73, no. 4 (March 2000): 763-64.

In the following review, Besser lauds Les Particules élémentaires as a “major tour de force,” akin to the works of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell.

What could partake more of millennial fever than the apocalyptic vision encountered in Houellebecq's compelling and unsettling Particules élémentaires? As in the best of suspense fiction, the key to the novel's mystery—a celebratory poem inserted at the beginning—is not revealed until the “Epilogue.” Only at the end do we realize the temporal perspective from which the novel's events (beginning in July 1998, proceeding in fits and starts, with prognostications of the future and flashbacks to the past) are to be viewed—the year 2079.

Until this ultimate revelation, we assume we have been reading, in antipodal counterpoint, the life stories of the eminent...