Michel Houellebecq’s Serotonin is a caustic, frightening, hilarious, raunchy, offensive, and politically incorrect novel about the decline of Europe, Western civilization, and humanity 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.” He hates his young girlfriend, and the feeling is almost certainly mutual; his career is pretty much over; and he has to keep himself thoroughly medicated to cope with day-to-day life.Suffocating in the rampant loneliness, consumerism, hedonism, and sprawl of the city, Labrouste decides to head for the hills, returning to Normandy, where he once worked promoting regional cheeses and where he was once in love, and even—it now seems—happy. There he finds a countryside devastated by globalization and by European agricultural policies, and encounters farmers longing, like Labrouste himself, for an impossible return to a simpler age.As the farmers prepare for what might be an armed insurrection, it becomes clear that the health of one miserable body and of a suffering body politic are not so different, and that all parties may be rushing toward a catastrophe that a whole drugstore’s worth of antidepressants won’t make bearable.
What's Bookie?
- Free delivery in Germany.
- Find your perfect next read.
- Track to motivate you to read more.
- Connect with people like you.
Serotonin A Novel
Michel Houellebecq’s Serotonin is a caustic, frightening, hilarious, raunchy, offensive, and politically incorrect novel about the decline of Europe, Western civilization, and humanity 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.” He hates his young girlfriend, and the feeling is almost certainly mutual; his career is pretty much over; and he has to keep himself thoroughly medicated to cope with day-to-day life.Suffocating in the rampant loneliness, consumerism, hedonism, and sprawl of the city, Labrouste decides to head for the hills, returning to Normandy, where he once worked promoting regional cheeses and where he was once in love, and even—it now seems—happy. There he finds a countryside devastated by globalization and by European agricultural policies, and encounters farmers longing, like Labrouste himself, for an impossible return to a simpler age.As the farmers prepare for what might be an armed insurrection, it becomes clear that the health of one miserable body and of a suffering body politic are not so different, and that all parties may be rushing toward a catastrophe that a whole drugstore’s worth of antidepressants won’t make bearable.
Popular Reviews(1)
Reviewed by kenthis book got me out of the first Reading Rut of 2020 and for that i am grateful. first and foremost, the writing style is A+ and it was, i believe, what kept me reading. detailed without being overburdened. worthy of imitation. anyway, sadly i only took a few notes (i was too engrossed in the prose - a good thing unto itself?) to make a decent and cohesive review. not that i care, this is a thought dump, more or less. the disgust men have that the narrator describes regarding the maintenance and upkeep of the artifice of womanhood is nothing short of ridiculous. given how his attraction to that chestnut-haired girl from El Alquián is likely because he does not know her in the intimate way he knows Yuzu. and that “impression of being more natural and more naturally in tune with the world”, as an indifference to a woman’s own beauty - the notion of beauty without effort? and after this discussion he goes on to say - yuzu can be a prostitute. typical to view women in that false dichotomy way..... AND oh my god that scene where the narrator thinks of killing the son of his ex-lover (the one that got away, more or less, the one he cheated on, like a dumbass) was... absurd? ridiculous? i don’t know what i would have done if he did kill the child. certainly, the fact that he didn’t made him a more reasonable person in my eyes. the parting shot of SEROTONIN leaves a lasting impression. after undergoing the narrator’s depressive state, he gives us this: God takes care of us; he thinks of us every minute, and he gives us instructions that are sometimes very precise. Those surges of love that flow into our chests and take our breath away - those illuminations, those ecstasies, inexplicable if we consider our biological nature, our status as simple primates - are extremely clear signs. i know the precise feeling he describes. and it’s nice. though shocking to end on a religious note when the narrator did not have that inclination for most of the book. still, maybe that’s what happens, in the end.