Author: Milan Kundera
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Blurb: In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. This magnificent novel juxtaposes geographically distant places, brilliant and playful reflections, and a variety of styles, to take its place as perhaps the major achievement of one of the world’s truly great writers.
Me: The first book I've read for fun in college! It had been on my list for a while and I thought I'd finally give it a read... so glad I did. It got me out of a reading rut and was stunning and totally new but also very readable.
The Ups: I'd known this book was very critically acclaimed, but I never really knew why. To be completely honest, all I'd heard about it in the past was that it was very "pseudo-intellectual" and there was a lot of sex. Having read it now, I can't disagree with either of those points, but I understand the praise now.
The structure of the book is something completely new and incredible. It begins with some strange intellectual interjections from the narrator that occasionally reappear, reminding the reader that they are still very much detached and observing of other people's lives. The characters never feel too close, despite how intimate we get with their thoughts and feelings. Yet I really loved how we went from character to character, exploring all of their complexities and relationships with each other. There are maybe four major characters in two main romantic relationships: one of husband and wife, and one of mistress and lover. Both stories explored the idea of love, and the detachment and inevitable loneliness that accompanies love so delicately.
I think the main thing Kundera does that is so masterful is his use of the language just to point out total subtleties. It can seem over-intellectual to a lot of readers, but I thought that if you could buy into at least a few of the descriptions, you would be offered a complete wealth of beautiful insights. Somehow, he paints the whole work with this amazing tone of matter-of-fact, but still beautiful and almost nostalgic, truthfulness. We end up detached but so invested in the character's lives, we know all the flaws of the world and still cry at Karenin's death, we are given the unbearable lightness of being and yet still see the beauty in living with it.
The Downs: However, I did feel like there were parts of the book where the tangents went a little too far for me, or I began to lose interest in the backstory of some characters (specifically Sabina and Franz) when the timeline began to jump around a little too much for my taste. It took me a bit to realize that time was flexible in the story and that led to quite a bit of confusion at first, but I soon realized that the chronology of events wasn't that essential to appreciating the book.
The other aspect was as much as it was such a cool book to read and think about, I don't think it made me feel as much as other books. It had the intellectual appeal and the interest to drive me along, and I can definitely see it as a book that many people revisit over and over again. But I think because of the nature of how disconnected the narrator can be to the characters, it can feel less personal and left me feeling almost still and quiet at the end -- which in the best way I think was the intent of the writing.
Rating: 4 kisses!
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