Summary from GoodReads:

A young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover–these are the two couples whose story is told in this masterful novel. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel “the unbearable lightness of being” not only as the consequence of our private actions, but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine.

My Review:

About half-way through this book I had an abrupt change of opinion.  When I began the book I was captivated by the language, the ideas, the ways my imagination was being sparked (and no, I’m not talking about the raunchy scenes – even though there were oh so many of them. ugh) and the gradual unfolding of the lives of the two couples involved in the story.

But then I started to get depressed.  And then even more depressed.  Soon I dreaded picking up the book and I wondered how in the world I could have gone to loving the book to dreading it so much.

I thought I understood what Milan Kundera was saying (even though I readily admit to much of it just going right over my head), but I think I got an idea.  I understand what he’s talking about when mentioning the “Unbearable Lightness of Being” – or at least I think I do.  What I don’t understand is why there couldn’t be just one character we could fall in love with, just one!  Instead, I felt as if he approached this in a clinical, hands-off manner as if saying, “Sure I thought them up, but now they are your responsibility!”.

I’ve never read a book that’s flipped me from one side to the other like this, so it’s a new experience for me and one I’m hoping to not have happen again anytime soon.  I haven’t given up on Kundera though and do plan to check his other works out.  I just hope I will end them able to at least smile instead of feeling as if I should tear up the book and cry crocodile tears on its corpse.

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