Michel Houellebecq

LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2020 A powerful criticism of modern life by one of the most provocative and prophetic writers of our age Florent-Claude Labrouste is dying of sadness. Despised by his girlfriend and on the brink of career failure, his last hope for relief comes in the form of a newly available antidepressant that alters the brain's release of serotonin. When he returns to the Normandy countryside in search of serenity, he instead finds a rural community left behind by globalisation and red-tape agricultural policies, with local farmers longing for an impossible return towhat they remember as a golden age. 'Despite its provocations, this is a novel of romantic and sorrowful ideas: Houellebecq as troubadour, singing lost loves' Rachel Kushner Michel Houellebecq has good claim to be the most interesting novelist of our times. . . Exhilarating in its nihilism, often very funny and always enjoyable' Evening Standard

Serotonin

It‘s not a spectecular story. You’re basically accompany a middle aged depressive man in a downward spiral. But the details, the sober, rational way down is what makes this book so great. It’s a predictable story with some unpredictable important details. 

J Fra

jack

i didn't like this one as much as submission i think (but looking back i don't think i liked submission all that much upon finishing it. it has grown in my estimation immensely due to its staying power). a lot less happens in this one and it is a lot more grounded in the real world (i think part of submission's charm is the combination of an outlandish premise and a monotonous tone), which i don't want to say is a fault but it does feel like one. still, a relatively compelling read, even though it still has all the problems submisson has without as much of the reward. it does make me want to read more houellebecq. something about his writing is fascinating to me.

oh also this translation is really really bad imo

mic shulman

i’m not sure how much of this i’ll retain but it did make me realize how much i love reading the inner monologues of snarky, mean, fictional depressives

ཐིཋྀ

Maurice FitzGerald

Can you imagine this book written by someone who grew up in America? Ha it is so so so so much worse here.

Anvar Cukoski 

Roman

Houellebecq kann ohne Zweifel schreiben, allerdings bedient er sich allzu oft diskriminierender Sprache und manifestiert diskriminierende (vor allem misogyne und rassistische) Stereotype. Diese doch sehr eingeschränkte Sicht des alten, weißen Mannes findet in meinen Augen in den Kritiken zu wenig Beachtung.

Lea Hi

Katie Chua

i like his writing style, even though content is fucking depressing. 

you would think i would tire of lonely white men complaining about their pitiful lives, but i just find it fascinating, really. on to the next !

Josh Clement

I liked the descriptions of food ("large draught beers and rillette sandwiches"), the countryside and learning about the problems that face French farmers. This is Houellebecq so strap in and prepare for extreme isolation and bitterness.

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Marion

martian1138

Ulrik Trolle

M. Marques

Peter Unruh

Klaus Eck

TITEL FOLGT

Arman Keyvanskhou

Susanna P.

Mrigank

Neil Murray

Michel Houellebecq's Serotonin is a scathing, frightening, hilarious, raunchy, offensive, politically incorrect novel about the current state of Europe, Western civilization, and mankind in general. Deeply depressed by his romantic and professional failures, the aging hedonist and agricultural engineer Florent-Claude Labrouste feels he is "dying of sadness." His young girlfriend hates him, his career is pretty much over, and he has to keep himself highly medicated to cope with day-to-day city life. Struggling with "sex, male angst, solitude, consumerism, globalisation, urban planning, and more sex" (The Economist), Labrouste decides to head for the hills, returning to Normandy, where he once worked promoting regional cheeses, and where, too, he had once been in love, and even—it now seems—happy. There he finds a countryside devastated by globalization and European agricultural policies, and local farmers longing, like Labrouste himself, for an impossible return to what they remember as a golden age: the smaller world of the premodern era. As the farmers prepare for what might be an armed insurrection, it becomes clear that the health of one miserable body and a suffering body politic are not so different, in the end, and that all concerned may be rushing toward a catastrophe a whole drugstore's worth of antidepressants won't be enough to make bearable.

Serotonin

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