A review by lucy_qhuay
Identity by Milan Kundera

1.0

Chantal is bitter about the fact men no longer turn their heads and look at her when she is passing in the street. She feels undesirable and her unhappiness is clear, so Jean-Marc, her partner, knowing she is not content with only his love and admiration, decides to write her letters as if he was a secret admirer.

At first, Chantal thinks it was a mistake or that someone is playing a trick on her, but as letters keep arriving, she gets caught in a strange erotic game, consumed with the need to know who's the anonymous observer.

She eventually finds out the truth and gets pissed, thinking this was all a ploy orchestrated by Jean-Marc to catch her cheating on him, so that he could dump her.

On the other hand, Jean-Marc himself, who started this whole business to make her happy, gets more and more jealous, since she decides to keep the letters a secret, and wonders whether that happens because she was prepared to, indeed cheat on him with some nameless man.

They sort of fight, she leaves to London to supposedly punish him and have mad sex with a bunch of people, he goes after her, there are a lot of weird erotic dreams involving old people and animals and then BAM, it is the end and this may have all been a dream their paranoid little minds came by at the same time.

Let's be honest here.

I thought Kundera's writing style was really good and, ocasionally, there were some bits of wisdom I really loved. For example:

'Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's very beautiful.

However, this book didn't make any sense.

I know 'Identity' was supposed to be about how the biggest fear of someone in love is to lose their significant other, while still having that person right beside them, that is, to no longer recognize the person they fell in love with in the face of the person that is right there.

And I can see this idea to some extent, but this is basically a story about two very dysfunctional people that are, in essence, a couple with severe communication issues.

Plus, as this may have been a dream anyway, I don't see the point of all the weird stuff that happened.

Not recommended at all.