and now to leave you with a story of a mother's love for her son.

"It is France's literary slanging-match of the decade. But as Ceccaldi tours Paris slagging off her famous son, what initially enthralled the literary world is becoming more and more painful to watch. Raging at Atomised, Ceccaldi writes: "If he is unfortunate enough to use my name in something again, I'll cane him round the face, that'll knock his teeth out, that's for sure. And [his publishers] won't stop me." She talks about how she flew to Paris in 1998 after reading the book and wanted to smash up his publishers and then smash his face in."

"After you left your son ..." I begin asking. "Fuck, don't you understand anything at all? I never left anybody. My son is my son. It was more him that left me. I had a relationship with him until he decided he had been abandoned. I saw him every year. He was with my mother in law ... The problem with kids brought up by people other than their parents ..."

>> She went to a bookshop, picked up Atomised and was furious. "I said, 'Fuck, it's not true.' He described me as a kind of whore, kept by I don't know what American. That's slander. All my life I've toiled to earn money for other people. I want him to apologise. If I was law-suit minded, I would have sued him and won."

"What's this moronic literature?! Houellebecq is someone who's never done anything, who's never really desired anything, who never wanted to look at others. And that arrogance of taking yourself as superior ... Stupid little bastard. Yes, Houellebecq's a stupid little bastard, whether he's my son or not."

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