 Book Reviews
with Robin Osborne
Lanzarote
By Michel Houellebecq
Heinemann $27.95
 By holding up a mirror to modern society and revealing much to be uncomfortable about, French-born, Ireland-dwelling Michel Houellebecq has attracted polarised reactions to his two bestselling novels, Atomised and Platform.
He is decidedly non-PC and writes in succinct, charmless sentences about such contemporary topics as 9-5 employment, immigration and raunchy but loveless sex, including S&M and multiple partners.
Further, his main characters, including the male narrators of Platform and this latest, short (87-page) work, seem to bear a close resemblance to the author himself.
Yet there is no doubting that this acclaimed writer is an astute observer of the alienated western condition, in the manner of, say, his late countryman Albert Camus, and has much to tell us, even in Australia.
In Platform, Houellebecq's doppelganger was a Ministry of Culture bureaucrat - even named Michel - who took up with a raunchy Paris travel agent before planning a package holiday business specialising in sex trips to exotic parts of Thailand.
This elegantly presented hardback pursues a broadly similar theme in a different location, the real island of Lanzarote, in the Canaries, whose strange, almost lunar landscape is depicted in a series of centrepiece photographs. This reinforces the impression that the events in the surrounding text are, at the least, 'factional'.
'Mid-way through the afternoon on 14 December 1999, I realised that my New Year was probably going to be a disaster - as usual,' begins the nameless narrator.
After seeking advice from a travel consultant - 'a brunette wearing some kind of ethnic top... her left nostril pierced...her hair hennaed' - he remarks, 'It's not Arab countries I don't like, it's Muslim countries. I don't suppose you have any non-Muslim Arab countries, do you?'
At last, he settles on Lanzarote where visitors seek not a 'crazy techno' experience like Corfu or Ibiza, or ecotourism ('for obvious reasons - see photos') but cultural tourism. In the narrator's case this means striking up a friendship with Rudi, a policeman and Raelian sect member, and two German lesbians, one not exclusively so, with whom he has sex on a beach and elsewhere.
Rudi, who refuses an invitation to join in, is later revealed to be a paedophile on the run and later in Europe is tried for sex/sect crimes.
An unsettling, if hardly entertaining, writer, Houellebecq is again well on target and Lanzarote is an easy introduction to his work. Moreover, it is on sale for only $6.95 at Book Warehouse, while stocks last.
- Thanks to Book Warehouse, Keen Street, Lismore for supporting this column.
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