I’ve been meaning to giving a nod to this entertaining article in LA Weekly describing Michel Houellebecq’s alcohol-fuelled sojourn in southern California. Among other things, it reveals that: “Perhaps There Is an Island, Houellebecq�s forthcoming novel about cloning, will be published in France at the end of the summer. […] de Brunhof [a literary agent based in Paris], who believes that Platform was written too hastily, said Island is by far Houellebecq�s most serious book and his masterpiece. (When she wrote to Houellebecq saying as much, he replied, �Yes, I know.�) Parts of it, she said, are extremely moving, and the ending is both romantic and melancholic. �Some people who read the manuscript were mesmerized.�It seems that on this side of the Atlantic, the translation of the original title (La possibilit� d’une �le) is more faithful, as you can see here. According to the Amazon blurb, “Houellebecq’s dazzling new novel, which moves between Paris, Andalucia and Lanzarotte, is a thought provoking, sometimes shocking, and ultimately moving examination of the modern world, the trials of old age and the death of love.” For anyone who has read H’s previous novels, it’s beginning to look like that Houellebecq is as loyal (chained?) to his recurring themes of cloning and pornography as P.G Wodehouse was to Bertie Wooster and Blandings Castle.I’ll still read it, of course.