The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq, Gavin Bowd Read Free Book Online Page A

quite simply, forbidden to children younger than thirteen; hatches were installed, like those in fast-food restaurants, to enable contact with families.
    An important breakthrough had been made: for several decades, the depopulation of the West (which in fact was not specific to the West; the same phenomenon could be seen in any country or culture once a certain level of economic development was reached) had been the subject of vaguely hypocritical and suspiciously unanimous lamentation. For the first time, young, educated people, in a good position on the socioeconomic scale, declared publicly that they
did not want
children, that they felt no desire to put up with the bother and expense associated with bringing up offspring. Such a casual attitude, obviously, could only inspire imitation.

 
     
    Daniel24, 5
     
    FAMILIAR WITH THE SUFFERING of man, I contribute to the decoupling, I accomplish the return to calm. When I kill a savage who, more audacious than the others, lingers too long at the protective fence—it is usually a female, with prematurely sagging breasts, brandishing her baby like a supplication—I have the sensation of accomplishing a necessary and legitimate act. The similarity of our faces—all the more striking as the majority of those who wander in the region are of Spanish or North African origin—is for me the sure sign of their death sentence. The human species will disappear, it must disappear so that the words of the Supreme Sister can be accomplished.
    The climate is mild in the north of Almería, the great predators are rare; it is no doubt for these reasons that the density of savages remains high, albeit in constant decline—a few years ago I even saw, not without horror, a herd of some hundred individuals. My correspondents note the contrary, almost everywhere across the globe: in very general terms, the savages are on the road to extinction; in numerous sites, their presence has not been signaled for several centuries; some of us have even come to consider their existence a myth.
     
     
    There is no strict limit to the domain of the intermediaries, but there are some certainties. I am The Door. I am The Door, and The Guardian of The Door. The successor will come; he must come. I maintain the presence, to make possible the coming of the Future Ones.

 
     
    Daniel1, 6
     
    There are excellent toys for dogs.
    —Patricia Dürst-Benning
     
    LIVING TOGETHER ALONE is hell between consenting adults. In the life of a couple, most often there will be at the beginning certain details, certain discordances about which it is decided to say nothing, in the enthusiastic certainty that love will end up solving all problems. These problems grow little by little, silently, before exploding a few years later and destroying all possibility of living together. From the beginning, Isabelle had preferred that I take her from behind; every time I tried another approach she went along with it at first, then turned around, as if in spite of herself, with an uneasy half-laugh. During all those years I had attributed this preference to a peculiarity of her anatomy, an inclination of the vagina or something along those lines, one of those things that men can never, despite all their goodwill, be exactly conscious of. Six weeks after our arrival, while I was making love to her (I usually penetrated her from behind, but there was a big mirror in our bedroom), I noticed that as she approached her climax she closed her eyes, and only reopened them a long time afterward, once the act was finished.
    I thought of it again throughout the night while emptying two bottles of pretty disgusting Spanish brandy: I relived our acts of love, our embraces, all those moments that had united us: I saw her again looking away each time, or closing her eyes, and I began to cry. Isabelle let herself come, she made you come, but she did not like to come, she did not like the outward signs of orgasm; she didn’t like them in me, and no