Duality is a common theme in literature. In fact, it’s one of my favorite themes, especially when it’s an internal struggle. Questions such as who we are, what’s our place in the world, how we perceive ourselves as opposed to how others perceive us are questions that have fascinated and baffled humans for thousands of years. I suspect we’ll still be trying to answer them millions of years from now as the growing Sun swallows our planet.

Whatever (Original French title: Extension du domaine de la lutte) by Michel Houellbecq is another book posing these types of questions without definitive answers. With so much literature published on this topic, the most important question rises as to how well a writer attempts an answer.

The novel’s protagonist is a 30-year-old computer programmer who writes strange stories about talking animals in his spare time. He’s content (or resigned) to how is his life is playing out, until he’s sent on a trip with a co-worker to train provincial workers on how to use a new computer system.

His traveling partner, Raphael Tisserand, is younger and a virgin. Together, they train by day and go out at night in various French cities. The protagonist (he’s never given a name) observes Tisserand’s repeated failures in trying to have sexual relations with women and comes to the conclusion that capitalism is to blame. Because of a free-market economy, the rich (the good-looking) get richer and the poor (the ugly) get poorer.

In one of the more suspenseful scenes in the book, the protagonist urges Tisserand to exact revenge on a woman and her lover that has thwarted Tisserand’s advances. The outcome, though, succumbs to the protagonist’s capitalist theory about love.

After this scene, the book becomes a lot more philosophical, shooting toward the universal like a slim rocket.

“For years I have been walking alongside a phantom who looks like me, and who lives in a theoretical paradise strictly related to the world,” the protagonist says toward the end of the book. “I’ve long believed that it was up to me to become one with this phantom. That’s done with.”

This is a common feeling among many in the world, that what you once thought would happen–or once thought you’d be–will no longer be a part of reality. It’s a difficult realization. Some never accept it, for better or for worse.

It’s this realization that Houellbecq asks his readers to consider in Whatever. His hero’s response may not be your choice. Nevertheless, it’s the only choice that will keep us alive.