An object
A word, a title, "annihilate", in small red letters;
above, in black, the first and last name of the author, below, in black, the publisher, "flammarion", always in lowercase.
The book is white, thick, heavy, a beautiful object with a cardboard cover such as can be found in Germany or in Anglo-Saxon countries, and sometimes in France for certain books with more colorful covers sold by mail order.
None of this is anecdotal, because Michel Houellebecq, like a craftsman, a carpenter creating furniture or a jeweler choosing the most beautiful stones, imagined and designed this new "white" collection with beautiful paper that will age well, fluid text which facilitates reading comfort, up to the red bookmark like the title, which makes it possible, to find one's bearings, to forget the bookmark or to corner one (a sacrilege!). The back cover is also white, no text, and if you don't watch the news or the newspapers, if you don't have a best friend who is too happy to tell you the story, you will have to dive into the deep end (over 700 pages), the book, to find out what lies behind
annihilating.
Here is just the first sentence: “Some Mondays at the very end of November, or the beginning of December, especially when you are single, you have the feeling of being on death row.”
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A novel
The whole story revolves around Paul.
He is married to Prudence, has a very religious sister, an unemployed notary brother-in-law, a much younger brother who restores tapestries.
Yes, in 2027, a notary can be unemployed, yet the economy is doing well.
Bruno Juge, the Minister of Economy and Finance, of whom Paul is the adviser, has done a good job.
The president is at the end of his second term, he must leave the place, the elections are approaching, a journalist from TF1 is in the starting blocks.
A political novel, not only because there are attacks of a new style, the novel becomes a thriller, and then it is the fall of Paul's father, victim of a stroke near Lyon in his house in Beaujolais.
He worked for the Secret Service.
Annihilate, by Michel Houellebecq, Éditions Flammarion, 736 pages, €26.
Flammarion Editions
So many tracks that will be diluted over the pages to focus around Paul and the wonderful Prudence, as if Paul's field of vision focused on himself, his fears, his couple and his dreams (Paul dreams a lot ).
There are beautiful pages on literature, Paul begins to read all the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and he observes the nature, the beauty and the color of the trees.
There is sweetness in the air, love too.
Annihilate
is a flamboyant novel of desire, love and death.
The sentences envelop us, warm us, we can laugh, cry.
The characters are tender, they also have flesh, we could devour them as we devour this book which sometimes resembles us so much.
Annihilate,
by Michel Houellebecq, Éditions Flammarion, 736 pages, €26
From the same author
Extension of the field of control
(1994).
His first novel around an antihero.
Against the background of the class struggle, a middle-aged executive, in his thirties, without charm, has no morale in the face of a world where everything is only appearances.
It is also a sharp criticism of psychoanalysis, and the birth of a great writer.
In 1999, Philippe Harel made a film of it.
Editions Maurice Nadeau
.
Configuration of the Last Shore
(2013).
Michel Houellebecq likes Lautréamont, Baudelaire, and he writes poems, some were sung by Jean-Louis Aubert.
In this collection, a hundred texts with beautiful musicality, which describe our world in a shade of gray, with sometimes the possibility of an island.
The plus: reading them aloud is magic.
Editions Flammarion
.
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