Half-brothers Michel and Bruno have a mother in common but little else.
Michel is a molecular biologist, a thinker and idealist, a man with no
erotic life to speak of and little in the way of human society. Bruno, by
contrast, is a libertine, though more in theory than in practice, his
endless lust is all too rarely reciprocated. Both are symptomatic members
of our atomised society, where religion has given way to shallow 'new age'
philosophies and love to meaningless sexual connections. Atomised tells the
stories of the two brothers, but the real subject of the novel is the
dismantling of contemporary society and its assumptions, its political
incorrectness, and its caustic and penetrating asides on everything from
anthropology to the problem pages of girls' magazines. A dissection of
modern lives and loves. By turns funny, acid, infuriating, didactic,
touching and visceral.