mind and questions you've tried to avoid answering. Thus I was gutted when after the first 100-or-so pages of The Possibility Of An Island it became clear that he hadn't 'done it again' he'd actually produced something of a damp squib. In fact the book picks up in the second half as Daniel becomes increasingly central to the fate of the Elohim and humanity, yet, it still missed something. This is a great puzzle for me. Everything's there that's made Houellebecq great in the past and is looked at from interesting new perspectives: men are still sexual deviants always looking for the younger woman but now the younger woman is shown to be just as cruel as the older husband, the ridiculous nature of religion in a scientific world is held up for all to see in the form of new-age-cultism, the degeneration of the body in a world that loves youth is examined in detail and reprising the theme of 'Atomised' humanity is to be replaced by a superior new breed. So why does it feel so lifeless? The Possibility of an Island lacks the sparkle of Houllebecq's previous books, the ideas are there, you can almost always see the points he's trying to make yet somehow they don't quite feel 'made' with the killer lines that summed up complex sociological ideas strangely absent. The savage treatment of his characters, holding their every mistake up, illuminating the tragically self-destructive nature of the human condition, still pervades yet you feel