Serotonin
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Serotonin
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Narrated by:
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John Sackville
About this listen
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2020
Penguin presents the audio edition of Serotonin by Michel Houellebecq.
The most important French book of the year.
Dissatisfied and discontent, Florent-Claude Labrouste begrudgingly works as an engineer for the Ministry of Agriculture and is in a self-imposed dysfunctional relationship with a younger woman. When he discovers her ongoing infidelity, he decides to abandon his life in Paris and return to the Normandy countryside of his youth. There he contemplates lost loves and past happiness as he struggles to embed himself in a world that no longer holds any joy for him.
His only relief comes in the form of a pill - white, oval, small. Captorix is a new brand of antidepressant, recently released for public consumption, which works by altering the brain’s release of serotonin. With social unrest intensifying around him, and his own depression deepening, Florent-Claude turns to this new medication in the hope that he will find something to live for.
Written by one of the most provocative and prophetic novelists of his generation, Serotonin is at once a devastating story of solitude, longing and individual suffering and a powerful criticism of modern life.
©2019 Michel Houellebecq (P)2019 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
"One cannot be said to be keeping abreast of contemporary literature without reading Houellebecq's work." (Karl Ove Knausgaard, New York Times)
Excellent
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Another great story by Michel.
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There are two ways you can look at this: he is an arrogant, selfish bore, obsessed with sex (he talks about wet pussy far too frequently for a man of his years), or it is a common tale about the physical and mental decline of a man whose life is entirely unfulfilled. Both these perspectives of the book are true.
Florent-Claude Labrouste, is a government agricultural specialist who escapes his cold, high maintenance, young Japanese girlfriend and hides in various hotels that will permit smoking (he discovered pornograhpic videos of her at swingers events).
He is prescribed anti depressants by his doctor to counter his low levels of serotonin which further reduce his libido, which wasn't great to begin with.
Eventually he moves to Normandy to meet up with an old friend Aymeric, a farmer/landowner, and to pursue the memories of lost loves to see where things began to wrong in his love life.
Aymeric is a broken man too. His wife and children have left him, his business is floundering and all he has left are vodka and guns.
The farmers are campaigning against government, EU and global policies which are crippling their industry and lives. Aymeric is central to the campaign which includes road blockades and armed confrontations with police. At the height of a protest Aymeric demonstrably shoots himself during a tense stand-off. This sparks the deaths of a further ten people. There are 600 suicides a year in the French agricultural industry.
Labrouste, through his job, contributed to the situation with the farmers so there is further guilt added to his depression.
Labrouste finds, and begins to stalk, an ex-love, Camille. He still has feelings for her and she is now a single mother with a small child. Labrouste watches her from a distance and hatches a monsterous plan to shoot the child so he and Camille can be together again. Fortunately, he can't go through with it and returns to see his doctor.
This time the doctor advises him to visit prostitutes and even passes him the contact details of three such ladies. I do hope this kind of thing happens in real life in France, it is social prescribing French style -vive le système de santé Français.
However. Labrouste is too lethargic to pursue even this course of treatment. Instead he moves back to Paris to contemplate suicide before his money runs out.
Although I've made this book sound desperately miserable, it's not. It's dark but it is also hilarious with smatterings of humour, it is smartly written and Houellebecq is a sharp observer
I feel that he doesn't want the reader's to like the characters but to show a number of truths. The lost loves are all Labrouste's fault and I wanted to shake him at times because of his impotent lethargy, he's not yet fifty!
The destruction of the French agricultural industry may be a mataphor for the decline of French pride and tradition and the decline of Labrouste may be a metaphor for the loss in direction and potency of middle-aged men. Labrouste is castrated by anti depressants.
No one cares about the dairy farmers and no one cares about middle-aged men.
The book will be hated by feminists because its about a self-absorbed man, because its politically incorrect and because of the two dimensional female characters but Houellebecq is provocative and probably just doesn't care.
There is no happy ending here and no lessons, it's outcome is uncompromisingly bleak. Please read this book.
John Sackville's reading is faultless and brings the story to life.
Dark, truthful and humorous
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The poor narration couldn’t finish it and I’m a houellebecq fan. All the other titles are in French
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We need more of Houellebecq
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