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

5.0

Holy shit!!! This book has collected dust on my to-read list for about 2 years now, but I finally got around to it today - funnily enough, the only reason I revisited it was thanks to my hope of using Kundera's connection with Tolstoy as the central focus of my final term paper for my War and Peace class. Perhaps it's all the life experience I've gained since I first added this book to my reading list, or the precursor of having had to stick with War and Peace for an entire semester, but I was instantly sucked into this novel today. It's really been blowing my mind lately just how good writers can be at capturing the genuine tragedies that come with womanhood, despite being old men. I suppose that I've been in a way conditioned to expect horrific things from an author trying to write a respectable, relatable female character, especially in a context filled with damaging sexual encounters and attitudes, having ingested a lot of absolutely perverted, shit writing from acclaimed authors of today. However, I felt wholly seen by Kundera. The idea that such damaged, unhealthy, ridiculous love has been around for so long is both comforting and a cause for total despair. I've always felt in life that I would either end up as either Tereza or Sabina - either settled but always trembling from combatting a grief larger than myself caused by said settlement, or always fleeing; I'd just never had human names to assign to these two outcomes before this novel. The alien body feeling, the repression of emotion, the internal turmoil that comes with betrayal you initiate yourself ... I could go on and on. Outside of Kundera's female characters, there was also so much cool shit in this book. The political philosophies in this were a dream compared to Tolstoy's writing, being both easy to follow and actually captivating. Kundera is able to easily pick apart an insanely tense political climate, revealing its buildup from simple human decisions borne of blind faith, mere desire to prove a point, or just plain pride. He is similarly easily able to remind readers how these simple origins end up having catastrophic effects. The beauty of Kundera's writing extends past his human characters, also!!! The final Karenin scene .... oh man