Mark Lilla NY Review of Books ht Dreher

François thinks he sees a new social model developing before his eyes, inspired by a religion he knows little about, and which he imagines has the polygamous family at its center. Men have different wives for sex, childbearing, and affection; the wives pass through all these stages as they age, but never have to worry about being abandoned. They are always surrounded by their children, who have lots of siblings and feel loved by their parents, who never divorce. François, who lives alone and has lost contact with his parents, is impressed. His fantasy (and perhaps Houellebecq’s) is not really the colonial one of the erotic harem. It is closer to what psychologists call the “family romance.”