Serotonin by Michel Houellebecq
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The New European

I try; I really do. I want to be hip, and cosmopolitan, and wittily detached. I even take the trouble to track Houellebecq’s locations on GoogleEarth in order to keep my interest levels up. But I fail. I do; I fail. I feel broken, dissipated, impotent. I try to hide it but the lines on my face are unmistakable marks of defeat as well as age. I must be the wrong temperament, or the wrong nationality, or perhaps have the wrong hormones. Yes, that’s it, the hormones.

I do enjoy the self-satisfied Euro-cynicism and the complacent nationalistic profiling (“You’re never well received by the English–they are almost as racist as the Japanese, like a lite version of them;” “How could a Dutch person be xenophobic? That’s an oxymoron: right there: Holland isn’t a country, it’s a business at best”). And I know about the literary allusions, the very French psycho-drama, and the implicit rebuke of the culture of late stage global capitalism. Serotonin is no doubt a work 0f refined and sensitive taste.

But taste just doesn't compensate for the pervasive dullness of the story, the triviality and banality of the descriptive details, or the smug vapidness of the characters. Tout est de ma faute. J'ai eu l'éducation d'un paysan et je n'ai jamais lu Molière. Je ne peux que baisser la tête de honte.

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