‘The Disappearance of the Western Libido’: Review of Michel Houellebecq’s Serotonin

Houellebecq always writes to a theme, as if himself addicted. And Serotonin – his latest book – embraces this addiction as closely as any other: a “small, white, scored oval tablet”, a “perfect drug, a simple, hard drug that brings no joy, defined entirely by a lack, and by the cessation of that lack”. And chasing old dragons, it starts with life at an early end; and with sex.