Angry mother slams French writer Houellebecq

By Estelle Shirbon

PARIS (Reuters) - If anyone was wondering where French avant-garde novelist Michel Houellebecq got his talent for character assassination, the answer is clear: his mother.

In his seminal 1998 novel "Les particules elementaires," known in English as "Atomised," Houellebecq vented a lifetime of anger against his mother by portraying her as an egocentric, sexually promiscuous hippie who neglected her children.

Now it's pay-back time.

Lucie Ceccaldi, 83, has returned to France from her home in the Indian Ocean island of Reunion to publish a book of her own, "The Innocent One," in which she heaps insults on her son.

"My son can go and get screwed by whomever he wants, he can write another book, I don't give a toss," she says in one excerpt, widely published in French media on Wednesday.

"But if he has the misfortune of sticking my name on anything again he'll get my walking stick in his face and that'll knock his teeth out," she says in what newspapers described as a typical sample.

Houellebecq's tales of emotional alienation and of the dearth of values in modern society have made him a defining voice of his generation, according to many literary critics.

He has always been very open about his grievances against his mother, who he says lost interest in him shortly after he was born in 1958 and left him in the care of his grandmother when he was a small boy.