The life story is accompanied by numerous political and social changes in France. What this friendly, almost human creature could ever have seen in the wretched Labrouste remains mysterious.Here and there Houellebecq relaxes from this effortful brand maintenance as purveyor of smut to the intelligentsia, and muses on non-sexual aspects of human life such as gastronomy or gentrification. An English translation by

The quotas have been cut, the hand-milked herd is losing money, the chateau is crumbling around him, his wife is divorcing him, and he himself is sinking into squalor and bitterness, scraping by on the income from some shoddy bungalows while passing his time drinking, listening to 70s rock (you know things are bad when a man turns to Deep Purple for solace), and broodily polishing his guns.By this point the narrative has casually accumulated a number of other rural lives, all afflicted by the forces of free trade in one way or another, and as the two men reconverge, each with his different but complementary misery, an unexpectedly gripping story begins to crystallise. That’s part of the routine, of course – narrator as sad creep imprisoned in his own puerile fantasies – but it seems very old suddenly. Finally, Labrouste moves back to Paris, contemplating committing suicide by jumping out of a window. Aymeric is among them and shoots himself, sparking a clash with riot police in which 10 more people die.Later on, Labrouste begins secretly observing the love of his life, Camille, who has a son from another man. The French satirist is uniquely placed to anatomise the impotence and rage of an embittered bureaucratTo some extent one reads Houellebecq precisely for his willingness to risk being loathed. Shtick seems the best word. Serotonin" by Michel Houellebecq The protagonist of the novel is the 46-year-old Florent-Claude Labrouste, an advisor to the Agriculture Department, suffering from depression and taking Captorix (fictitious antidepressant). The novel depicts French farmers struggling to survive in the face of globalisation, agribusiness and European Union policies.

He is the author of several novels including The Map and the Territory (winner of the Prix Goncourt), Atomised, Platform, Whatever and Submission. To some, Houellebecq is a prophet with a finger on the pulse of Europe; to others, a nihilistic bigot who gets too much press. The agony and rage of the demoted, the discarded, the “deplorable” (a segment of them, if not the whole basket), laid bare. A new anti-depressant has finally done for Labrouste’s already flagging libido, and as he faces the end of desire, he embarks on a nostalgic ramble through his life in sex, remembering and occasionally revisiting old flames and bedmates.Female characters have never been Houellebecq’s strong point, and the ones he parades past us here have about as much human interest as a catalogue of sexbots. think of Torremolinos!...”). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Suddenly the book’s seemingly haphazard elements begin working together: the sexual and political impotence, the helpless yearning for the past, the degraded (and downgraded) masculinity, the aggrieved, incel-eye view of things, the foggy coastal landscape with its scavenger humans and seabirds, the sinister new interest in firearms, all coalescing into a vision of life among a portion of humanity who have found themselves – often to their indignant amazement – stuck on the wrong side in the zero sum game of globalised commerce. The narrator, Florent-Claude Labrouste, is a depressed agricultural scientist who lives in a Parisian apartment block, the In short, what is taking place with French agriculture is a vast redundancy plan, but one that is secret and invisible, where people disappear one by one, on their plots of land, without ever being noticed.After watching a television documentary about people who choose to disappear from their life without telling anyone, Labrouste abruptly leaves his girlfriend, a young Japanese woman who is At the climax of the novel, farmers equipped with assault rifles blockade a motorway. Shock is a tricky commodity for an author to trade in over the long term, and it has to be said that the first third of his new novel, An unexpectedly gripping story begins to crystallise as the book’s seemingly haphazard elements begin working togetherHow to describe these crass, underpowered, chronologically bewildering opening sections?

I wish I could dismiss it as just another piece of cheap authorial vice-signalling, but the nastiness feels for once necessary: an integral part of the blighted reality And yet there it is.
Serotonin by Michel Houellebecq is published by Heinemann (£20). Reactionary humour is a part of the brand too, of course. Also by Michel Houellebecq There are some characteristic provocations, worthy of an ill-spirited chortle or two, including a proposal to re-evaluate General Franco as a “real giant” for his contributions to the development of mass tourism (“think of Benidorm! There is a horribly troubling scene of transactional paedophilia involving a visitor in one of the bungalows. Initially intent on killing the child with one of Aymeric's sniper rifles in order to win back her love, he finds himself unable to go through with it. What other novelist would have the willingness to go there, let alone the wherewithal?

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All rights reserved. Serotonin is typical of a Houellebecq novel, in that it will have side by side those who love it and those who cannot stand it. It foresaw many concerns of the As with many of Houllebecq's works, the protagonist is an alienated, middle-aged man.The initial print run in France was 320,000 copies. It played better when there was a liberal political consensus to act as a foil than it does under current conditions, but Houellebecq has a sociological curiosity few other novelists possess, and his more considered observations are still worth paying attention to.A promising development in this regard is the gradual fleshing out of Labrouste’s career.