SOURCE: Harkin, James. Review of Atomised, by Michel Houellebecq. New Statesman 129, no. 4487 (22 May 2000): 57.

In the following review, Harkin commends Houellebecq's sense of foreboding, grand themes, and cynicism in Atomised.

Released to a fanfare of outraged publicity in Paris nearly two years ago, Les Particules élémentaires quickly became a bestseller and made a minor celebrity of its author, Michel Houellebecq. Already translated into 22 languages, it is at last available in English under the title Atomised.

It is not hard to see why Paris was so offended. Atomised is a hugely ambitious novel of ideas—or, more accurately, a novel about the lack of ideas and morale in contemporary French society. It interweaves the disparate biographies of two half-brothers as they face up to their respective mid-life crises.

Bruno is a teacher whose hopes of becoming a writer have turned sour, and whose opportunistic enthusiasm for free love is...