The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera

"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."

This is my first Kundera book and I will definitely be reading more of his work. This book definitely, however, wins the award for Most Pretentious Title Ever. People would ask me what I was reading, and I would have to respond by reading the title in a sarcastic, Oxford-Professor-of-Literature voice to make it clear that I was aware of how obnoxiously superior I sounded.

As far as the philosophy of this book goes, it isn't dense and is fairly easy to comprehend. I thought the writing style actually presented its deeper thoughts in a very accessible and relatable manner. The sub textual messages and thought-provoking ideas were actually my favourite part of the book. Kundera has a strange style that feels like, instead of introducing you to a new concept, he is rather putting words to a feeling you have always felt. Or that was what it was like for me at least. 

What I didn't quite like was the surface level, such as the plot and characters. I honestly didn't enjoy any of the four main characters as people, but I could see that they where merely tools for Kundera to explore certain theme. Kundera even owns up to that fact within the book. I felt for each of the people as they felt so very human in the most highly caricatured way. The descriptions of the quiet despair and entrapment where incredibly moving. 

And we haven’t even touched on the sex yet. Kundera’s book is  rife with sex, sex is the other engine driving this dually powered writer, sex both passionate and routine, sex filled up with deep emotional meaning and sex stripped down to its tangible physicality, sex as recurring motif in one’s life illuminating greater insights into one’s personality and sex as secret door into the aesthetics of our time.

To write, as some have, that the book is primarily about erotic encounters is I think to miss the point. Instead it is a book about tyranny, the large and the small, the ones we endure and the ones we resist, the ones we submit to for love and the ones that always rankle silently. The tyranny of kitsch, as understood by the novel, kitsch to mean a subjective, sentimental folding screen that hides away the sight of death. The questions that the book seeks to explore circle around the ideas of polar opposites, truth and lies, love and hate (or indifference), freedom and slavery, heaviness and lightness. 

The Kundera style is a very delightful bit and piecework manner. We focus on one character, that character’s perceptions, that character’s perspectives, in little miniatures, some essay-like, that elaborate on the character’s psychology or history. Then we shift to another character and learn new things about that person, sometimes touching on the same pieces we’ve seen already.

Overall a wonderful, crazy and unique book. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, however I think worth reading. 

Age Rating 16+. Adult content. Sex, sexual encounters, death and military occupation.