A cynic endearing

If being cynical, is to live like a dog, Michael, the character of all the books of Houellebecq, available in different modes according to the situation, is an endearing dog. Behind the coldness and detachment of writing which we guess the meaning is the detachment of a character who leads us to take our time when everything is money, interest, cold calculation, a healthy decline, powerful, decisive . Peering over 350 pages a company whose modes of thought and life haunt us even in our desire for authenticity and freedom, we meet and we attach to a character who describes himself as not particularly humanist, and yet, on the occasion of the men in attendance, we can foresee the possibility of another life, where interest and calculating pushed to their extreme, would turn into their opposite, love and sharing. These are all the paradoxes of our lives that Houellebecq track here as in a mirror. An incomparable novel in contemporary literature.