the last book I ever read (Michel Houellebecq's The Map and the Territory, excerpt three)

from The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq:

“That went well … with Frédéric,” Olga told him as they walked home, along the boulevard Saint-Germain. “Yes …” Jed replied, perplexed. Among his reading as an adolescent, at his Jesuit school, there had been those realist novels of the French nineteenth century where it happens that ambitious young men succeed through women; but he was surprised to find himself in a similar situation, and in truth he had rather forgotten those realist novels of the French nineteenth century. For a few years he had been able to read only Agatha Christie, and even more specifically, only those involving Hercule Poirot, which could hardly help him in the present circumstances.