One of the most important facts about Michel Houellebecq - usually overlooked in favour of his nihilism, alleged racism and other attention-seeking provocations - is that he is a first-rate prose stylist. This is not quite enough, however, to make him a good novelist. Even some of his best novels (Atomised and Platform, for example) have clunky and unconvincing dialogue, and are packed with amateurish plot devices. His last novel, The Possibility of an Island (2005), was quite simply a mess: an artificial and histrionic tale the only redeeming feature of which was a kind of high-pitched sarcasm that quickly began to grate and was certainly never sufficient to sustain a book. The film, directed by Houellebecq himself, was even worse.
