Word: bruno
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Eighteenth century chateaus are particularly desirable because of their large windows and roomy interior spaces. Laure Jakobiak, who works on chateau restorations with architect Bruno Lafourcade, says, "It is essentially Americans who are interested in restoring chateaus. They are very attracted by the history...
...terciopelo snake is a member--contain compounds that closely resemble substances used by white blood cells to fend off bacterial infections. Some of these substances work by damaging or disrupting lipids within the bacterial cell wall. A decade ago, microbiologists Edgardo Moreno, of Costa Rica's National University, and Bruno Lomonte, of the University of Costa Rica, realized that a muscle-destroying toxin in terciopelo venom behaved the same...
...Bruno and Michel are members of that awkward generation too young to be considered baby-boomers and too old to fit in with the Generation-Xers. They are, rather, the product of the hippie free love that was just beginning to flourish on both sides of Atlantic forty-odd years ago. Born to a loveless woman who leaves both sons with their respective grandparents in order to join a commune in California, Bruno and Michel become, essentially, the direct descendants of their age. Both dracins endure lonely and occasionally brutal childhoods that leave them unlovable and incapable of loving...
...fairly interesting read. But it is the actual prose of the novel which contributes to its generally unbearable nature. Houellebecq simply refuses to let his characters be real human beings. They can exist only as generational archetypes or the embodiments of philosophical speculations. "Was it possible to think of Bruno as an individual?" muses Houellebecq's narrator. "The decay of his organs was particular to him, and he would suffer his decline and death as an individual. On the other hand, his hedonistic worldview and the forces that shaped his consciousness and desires were common to an entire generation." While...
...increasingly ludicrous. For Houellebecq's narrator, it is only logical that a free-love commune should turn into a Satanic cult capable of appalling masochistic sexual rituals. As for his individual characters, there is of course no action for them to take other than to wander off into oblivion. Bruno checks into a mental institution where he spends the rest of his pathetic days numbing his libido with cocktail medications. Michel, after discovering a way to clone perfectly rational non-egotistical human beings that will in a few years time subsume flawed humanity, simply disappears. Such episodes could, under different...