Possibility of an Island

A very smart book about religion, culture, cults, love, aging and the future. Mr. H. was extremely efficient at portraying the inevitable failure of the human organism, in terms of biological necessity. So it was a bit depressing, but it gave you a number of things to think about. He is certainly one of the best contemporary fiction writers. His work ins very easy to read and access, but can go as deep as the reader wishes. He interwove current fads and trends with their inevitable failure in a very elegant manner. The cover art made it look pretty trashy, so this is certainly a case where you can’t judge a book by it’s cover. The book is very current and very good.

I think he probably is recycling the same ideas now. He's good because he provokes, even as he possibly outrages. If you have been outraged by Huxley's 'Brave New World', there's a brilliant chapter in Atomised where he suggests that we now can do the BNW stuff, so let's get on with it...

I think that it was a definite improvement on Lanzarote but it still had the whiff of rehash about it.

The ideas he articulated so well in Whatever, Platform and Atomised didn't quite have the legs for another book. It still has the Houellebecq "charm", but it's hard to feel that it's not all been done before.

This story is a tragedy, superbly told by an articulate, self-aware protagonist, not unlike Humbert Humbert of Lolita fame.