SOURCE: Brookner, Anita. “Sexual Tourism a Go-Go.” Spectator 287, no. 9034 (29 September 2001): 40-1.

In the following review, Brookner finds shortcomings in the ambivalence and underlying complicity of Houellebecq's indictment of global tourism and capitalism in Plateforme.

Michel Houellebecq, whose novel Les Particules élémentaires (translated as Atomised) raised such delighted shock waves in 1998, is no stranger to controversy. Plateforme has already provoked protests in mainstream French newspapers, not for its obscenity but for certain slighting remarks directed against Islam. Thus Houellebecq ploughs a lonely furrow of political incorrectness which will enrage the incorruptibles and delight his publishers, who have rewarded him with an initial print run of 200,000 copies. Whether they will reap the rewards of their largesse is open to question, since Plateforme is an altogether more ambivalent book which may raise expectations that are not entirely fulfilled.

In Les Particules élémentaires it was Houellebecq's contention, perfectly valid in...