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Serotonin (novel)Serotonin (French: Sérotonine) is a novel by French writer Michel Houellebecq, published in January 2019.
Plot
The narrator, Florent-Claude Labrouste, is a depressed agricultural scientist who lives in a Parisian apartment block, the Tour Totem. He commutes to Normandy to help promote French cheese. Sympathetic to the plight of local farmers, he is powerless to help them retain their traditional methods:
In short, what is taking place with French agriculture is a vast redundancy plan, but one that is secret and invisible, where people disappear one by one, on their plots of land, without ever being noticed.
After watching a television documentary about people who choose to disappear from their life without telling anyone, Labrouste abruptly leaves his girlfriend, a young Japanese woman who is highly sexual but devoid of affection, quits his job under a false pretence and flees to a chain hotel in another part of Paris.
A doctor prescribes him an antidepressant to remedy his low levels of serotonin, hence the title of the novel. Although the drug dulls his sex drive, Labrouste returns to Normandy in search of former lovers. While there, he visits an old college friend, Aymeric, a divorced and suicidal aristocratic landowner. At the climax of the novel, farmers equipped with assault rifles blockade a motorway. Aymeric is among them and shoots himself, sparking a clash with riot police in which 10 more people die.
Later on, Labrouste begins secretly observing the love of his life, Camille, who has a son from another man. At first intending to shoot the child with one of Aymeric's sniper rifles in order to win back her love, he finds himself unable to go through with it. Finally, Labrouste moves back to Paris, contemplating committing suicide by jumping out of a window.
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