Good moments, funny bits, but suffers from another dull middle and another extremely melodramatic ending. Houellebecq's best observations are his most mundane, like the cheery sound of the computer booting up or his observations on tourism. I find his "spiciest" takes a bit boring... Just European conservatism. As others noted, his sex scenes are cartoonish, but this is just Céline's trick of exaggerating emotion to compensate for the attenuation that happens through reading.