Anéantir

“This would be a catharsis if Anéantir reflected our times, but it clings to the news in its most ordinary, mediocre and ephemeral form. If only it gave us back something of the spirit of the age, but no. (…) What is it about? Chinese solar panels, an election campaign, boomer psychology, technology transfers, Breivik, urban loneliness, fertility rates, eco-fascism, nihilism, strokes, inheritance law, the selfish gene, sexual misery, the Rassemblement national, Zemmour, the Beijing–Washington trade war, dreams, chaos, Islam, biotechnology, Sephardic dentists, Le Lambeau, euthanasia, more dreams, an election campaign again, a deficit of notoriety, more dreams… (a non-exhaustive inventory). And then love, always, which he repeats is his principal subject. But does one turn to literature to find the evening news menu of France 2? An atmosphere occasionally reminiscent of Baron noir, a hope soon disappointed, since it is far less cruel” (Pierre Assouline).

Anéantir is neither a page-turner nor a suspense novel. Assouline is right: “it wants to be a thriller, but on that score Grangé, Chattam, Minier and Thilliez have nothing to worry about.” Nor is Anéantir a compartmentalized novel, nor even, probably, a symbolic one, its main character understanding little of what surrounds him, and barely more of what happens to him and to those close to him. His father is now mute — and matters worsen over the last hundred pages, perhaps the most interesting in the novel. Here one finds again the unsettling threat Houellebecq casts over our society, once more revealing him as a writer of anticipation novels. On this point his vision is clear: our civilization has embarked on a generalized decay, and it will need no one’s help to achieve it.