Two things seem out of the novels of Houellebecq: a truly brilliant style, caustic, sober and efficient on the one hand and on the other a hard enough theoretical corpus illustrated by the parallel stories of two half-brothers lost in the company that followed May 68, theoretical corpus thus giving prominence to desire and sexual frustration, loneliness, the falsity of human relationships and social competition, a mix of inspirational themes more or less Nietzschean on morality (we think especially with the introduction and development of its references to Christianity).
While it is true that his analysis of the moral transformation of Western society is interesting if not totally new, the violence with which the developing Houellebecq will make him occupy a place perhaps too much, to the detriment of style and the pleasure to be derived from the spirit that demonstrated the author. These claims, more and more aggressive and disturbing, gradually take the whole place. A too wallowing in the mud, we finally lift the heart.