A review by sassylk
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

challenging emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This was slightly disappointing to me - I read it very fast, but I wasn’t sure that I was enjoying it per se. I don’t know what to make of it, which makes me feel like I haven’t understood it all that well. It felt very modernist, with the author’s voice coming through at points to remind us of its fictional identity, as well as the weaving in of dreams into the main narrative. I liked some of the messages - ‘happiness is the desire for repetition’ is a beautiful idea, and there was a lot of very interesting philosophy explored within it; the idea of body and soul, good and evil, light vs weight. I liked the motifs that echoed throughout - ‘es muss sein’ felt really beautiful. However, I think my problem may lie with the actual narrative itself. I didn’t really care about the characters, I found them slightly interchangeable, even if they were realistic they still didn’t feel 100% fleshed out. There was a lot that Kundera was trying to do with them, but the story was also disarmingly simple, which might appeal to some but I found it tiresome. I guess that’s sort of the point - repetition is found in everyday humanity, the combination of the very simple outside vs the very complex interior monologue is an interesting modernist idea, and one that appeals to me in theory, but in practise I found (at least in this case) that this theme bordered on pretentious quite a lot of the time. I don’t know if I’ll spend a lot of time thinking about it in the future, but if I do, maybe I’ll move my 3 stars to a 3.5. We’ll see.