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The Possibility Of An Island
by Michel Houellebecq


8.6

based on 23 reviews
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based on 13 votes
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The loved and despised French author's fourth novel--a critique of present-day culture--is partially based on the real-life cloning-obsessed cult the Raelians.

Knopf, 352 pages
05/23/2006
$24.95

ISBN: 0307263495

Fiction
General Literature & Fiction
Science Fiction & Fantasy

NOTES:
Known in Europe as "La possibilite d'une ile." Translated from the French by Gavin Bowd.

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Houston Chronicle Steven E. Alford

Readers will do well to ignore the author and read his provocative, often funny, intellectually engaging novel.

Village Voice David Ng

Reviewers intent on taking him down (as John Updike attempted in a recent New Yorker) come off as prudish and puny. Houellebecq's infinite void swallows everything and spits nothing back. It's enough to make Daniel25 wish for the certainty of death. "I was, I was no longer," he intones, longing for oblivion. Until then, there's always money, pussy, and if we're lucky, more novels by Michel Houellebecq.

Wall Street Journal Brian A. Brown

The Possibility of an Island, like other books by Mr. Houellebecq, is a sharp check on our hubris, our complacent assumption that things are getting better and better. It is always worth asking whether they really are.

Washington Post Merle Rubin

It's a skillful amalgam of prophecy, satire and science fiction, covering some of the same ground as Margaret Atwood's "Oryx and Crake" but with much more finesse and conviction.

Daily Telegraph Tibor Fischer

If you liked "Atomised" and "Platform," you'll love The Possibility of an Island. Houellebecq is perhaps the most talented of current French writers, and might be termed the Lord of the New Despair, but he has yet to write his masterpiece.

The New York Times Book Review Stephen Metcalf

By turns bewitching and tiresome...In over-extrapolating from his hero, Houellebecq too often becomes a proselytizer on behalf of fornication, as boring as those who would thump their Bible against it.

Publishers Weekly

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. [27 March 2006, p.61]

Sydney Morning Herald Andrew Riemer

Some readers may be growing tired of his studied outrageousness. And the formula is, perhaps, turning too predictable. Yet the intensity of his misanthropy and pessimism is as striking as ever. As is his despairing, basically traditional moral stance.

The Independent Matt Thorne

It's unsurprising that a misanthropic talent with a love of science fiction would want to realise his vision of the end of the world, but Houellebecq is undoubtedly at his best when he uses his forensic skills to dissect our present age.

The New Republic James Wood

It is the fiction that is itself comparatively weak, and comparatively uninteresting.

Boston Globe Nathaniel Bellows

A book of large ideas that attempts to explore, but fails to cohere, the unwieldy ideas of love, isolation, sexual necessity, personal expression, and technology.

The Observer Tim Adams

Tou are left with a repetitive, clever shell of a world, a calculated atmosphere of pornography, gratuitous and starkly lit, which, though it is perhaps what the author is striving for, never feels quite enough.

The Spectator Anita Brookner

Long and intractable. [22 Oct 2005, p.54]

PopMatters John Schacht

Like Daniel1, Houllebecq is a wounded animal lashing out in fear at the unfathomable mysteries of existence. Admiration for Houllebecq's considerable skills as a writer is tempered by pity, because joy seems, in the end, simply beyond him.

Daily Telegraph

This is far from Houellebecq’s best work. He belongs to the tradition of Rabelais and Louis-Ferdinand Céline, but lacks their human and stylistic richness. There can be a laziness about his work, a tone of indolent provocation, and you sense it here.

The New Yorker John Updike

It is to Houellebecq’s discredit, or at least to his novel’s disadvantage, that his thoroughgoing contempt for, and strident impatience with, humanity in its traditional occupations and sentiments prevents him from creating characters whose conflicts and aspirations the reader can care about.

London Review Of Books Theo Tait

Disastrously ricocheting between scepticism and credulity, cynicism and sentimentality, The Possibility of an Island offers mostly pointless hate and filth.

San Francisco Chronicle Michael Roth

[Houellebecq]'s flat tale to illustrate the idea of the end of history is merely neophilosophy, pseudothought. Without originality, without poetry and with an odor of sanctimonious self-seriousness, he has given us a wanna-be novel of ideas.

The Nation Christine Smallwood

The Daniel chapters are long-winded but tolerable; the Daniel24 and -25 chapters are unbearable pseudo-philosophical meditations on the meaning(lessness) of human life...Island, where science-fiction fantasy retreats into a political vacuum, is unmoored from the ideas that grounded his previous fictions, and fails--as a novel and as theory.

Booklist Allison Block

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. [1 May 2006, p.71]

Kirkus Reviews

A verbose novel of crushing ideas, ostentatious carnality and deep misanthropy that fail to connect. [15 Apr 2006, p.371]

New York Observer Regina Marler

His sour fictional enterprise is, like Daniel’s sagging testicles, showing the effects of age and overexertion. [29 May 2006]

The Independent Tim Martin

The dusting of hard science that was little more than plot thickener to the previous novel becomes a dense film in this one. Elsewhere, he simply drags out the tropes on which he has traded for years: male desolation, salvatory blowjobs, general death of love, etc.

The average user rating for this book is 8.6 (out of 10) based on 13 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

pantelis a gave it a10:
Houellebecq dares to speak about sex, old age, why we live, the future of mankind, etc in a way I have never before encountered in a novel. He's been accused of being provocative but what else can one be in an indifferent world driven by money and conformism!

William D gave it a9:
It rambles a bit too much compared to earlier works, but most critics are really missing the boat on MH. An important writer with teeth and no fear.

Michelle M gave it a10:
literature at its finest! the best book of this decade, past decade. best book since pride & prejudice. the negative reviews are so stupid and it is so good. i've read it nine times... this week! i cant put it down ever.

Salam5 gave it a9:
It's hilarious to see such vapid critisism compiled in one location. This book, which is not Houellebecq's best, is still so far beyond revered relics like Updike and Roth, so much closer to the escence of existence than most anything else in this books section, it makes me belive in him evermore. Why are these critics in such desperate need of optimism? Read this book and find out.

rex r gave it an8:
this is a scathing, tortured book that could only be populated by characters accordingly anguished, but I disagree with the lines of analysis that find the either the author or his characters necessarily defeated. daniel 25 does not quit; he finds artifacts of others still dtruggling against the current, and in the end he goes forward into nothing. Why? Houellebecq's sharpest critics seem to have have closed his book disturbed by its darkness and without answering this question.

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The Possibility Of An Island by Michel Houellebecq

The Possibility Of An Island
by Michel Houellebecq