Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Gloom suffuses the works of celebrated French novelist Houellebecq ( Platform, 2003). His latest offering features 40-year-old Daniel, a caustic comedian and filmmaker whose celebrity status earns him access to Elohim, a cult of sexually promiscuous health fanatics who achieve immortality through cloning. The narrative alternates between the original Daniel (plagued by a succession of failed love affairs, with affection remaining only for his Welsh corgi) and his subsequent neohuman incarnations, virtually devoid of humanity and emotion. Moments of contentment are rare for Houellebecq, who seems to revel in a sort of vulgar navel gazing, replete with horrifying images (one particularly distressing scenario depicts explosions of infant skulls). Joyless Daniel even despises laughter, that sudden and violent distortion of the features that deforms the human face and strips it instantly of all dignity. Frequently labeled by critics as a malcontent and misogynist, Houellebecq seems to revere canines, with their capacity for devotion and unconditional love. It's a strange bit of sentimentality from a man who seems, by all accounts, heartless. --Allison Block Copyright 2006 Booklist

Publishers Weekly
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Like the New Age camp of The Elementary Particles and the Thai sex tourist hotels of Platform, Houellebecq's latest novel has a self-enclosed setting: the shifting sites at which the Elohimites, a UFO/cloning cult, hold their seminars. Daniel, a shock jock famous for such slogans as "We prefer the Palestinian orgy sluts," narrates what turns out to be his life story. Early on, Daniel's partner, Isabel, leaves him after her breasts begin to droop and she gains some pounds. Then Daniel, following a catastrophic love affair with nubile Spaniard Esther, gets interested in the Elohim, gets close to the "prophet" and witnesses an event that catapults the group into the center of world history. Daniel's part in this converges with his jealousy of Esther. Meanwhile, the West is going to hell in a handbasket, and the Elohim idea of substituting cloning and suicide for reproduction and old age is catching on. Everything ends frighteningly (unless you like clones) and satisfactorily (if you take a cynical enough view). Houellebecq has never written better, yet this novel seems stuck in the groove-clunky mini-essays, gonzo porn digressions-first etched by his earlier novels. 50,000 announced first printing. (May 26) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Provocative French novelist Houellebecq (Platform, 2003, etc.) extends his social critique to embrace cult religions, aging, cloning and the apocalypse. The author's latest is grounded in characteristic territory: a sexual odyssey narrated by a scathing assessor of contemporary social mores. Forty-something Daniel has built a fat career and fortune "on the commercial exploitation of bad instincts, of the West's absurd attraction to cynicism and evil," via outrageous comedy sketches, films and rap records. He and his gorgeous wife Isabelle opt to withdraw from our "savage world, populated by cruel and stupid people," and move to an isolated estate in Spain. But her drooping flesh and growing professional irrelevance kill the marriage, although the couple will share custody of their dog, Fox. Daniel becomes involved with a religious sect, the Elohim, which seeks immortality and advocates sexual self-indulgence, the Cretan diet and scientific research into the creation of artificial human life. Daniel's own virility is restored by sluttish Esther, 25 years his junior, with whom sexual rapture and very occasional conversation evolve, for him, into love. But the inevitable end of the affair brings about Daniel's ultimate humiliation and eventual suicide. His chapters alternate with briefer ones narrated two millennia later by products of the Elohim's efforts at recreating copies of its believers. Daniel 24, then 25, are "neohumans" living—minus tears, laughter, sex and suffering—in the same Spanish compound as their original, with clones of Fox, while hordes of savages (survivors of atomic catastrophes and the Great Dry Up) howl and die outside the protective fence. Houellebecq's philosophical pronouncements and sardonic, sometimes sentimental assertions about love, belief and humanity (the fake humans easily outclass the real ones) touch predictable buttons. A verbose novel of crushing ideas, ostentatious carnality and deep misanthropy that fail to connect. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Library Journal
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Upended by a midlife crisis, Daniel enters a cult that aims to secure eternal happiness-through cloning. A 50,000-copy first printing and a nine-city tour; from the bad-boy French author and winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.