Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Human life occurs only once, therefore we cannot determine which of our decisions are good and which bad.

 A quote from The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.

I borrowed the book of a friend. When I asked her what the book was about she said: ‘about nothing in particular, you get to know four different people and their lives’. ‘Hm, I thought; no story? Won’t that be boring? I decided to go ahead and read the book anyway. I assumed the four characters must be very interesting.’ Like she said, the book explores the different ways to live:

1.If you only have one life to leave; it’s so insignificant in the bigger picture. Why even bother living? Why worry or make a stance? Lightness.  2. if you only have one life to live, everything you becomes significant. You can only do something once and there is never a way back. Weight.

The four characters in the book are there for you to choose what is best: lightness, or weight. The book is set in Prague, during the revolution, which gave it an interesting back story. The author is present in the book. He is there for commentary on the characters, but also on the book itself. He helps the reader out. Sometimes he draws a conclusion from a character’s action, you pause and think, eh, what? Kundera, nice author as he is, then adds a line or 3 in which he states: you know, I didn’t get this at first, but when you look at this and that and so on. This is great, because you don’t feel that stupid anymore for not getting it the first time. Also, it gives a small insight in the world of novel writing.

I like the Dutch cover of the book best.
It captures the lightness/weight
dilemma perfectly.

The characters really come to life. They all have great qualities and their flaws, but also little quirks that makes a character, in my eyes, become a real person. For example Therese how likes to walk around with a book in hand, because it makes her feel like she is part of a special community of book readers. What I like best is that their views on love, lust and life were so different. I could sometimes really identify with a character and I could sometimes despise their actions. They made me question my own view on life and how to live it.

So how does Kundera do that? For example with the theme love you have Thomas who believes that making love to a woman has nothing to do with love, wanting to sleep beside the person you just made love to is for him the ultimate sign of love. Terese, however, believes that body and soul are one. She feels you cannot make love without being in love.

Kundera also toys with the idea of ‘Es muss Sein’, a love that is meant to be. How is only special because this is the person you are destined for. Later on, he talks about how ‘Es könnte auch anders sein; it could have been different. He explains that love is all a matter of chance, but that that doesn’t make it less special. Which made me think of this brilliant song. 

I adored the little dictionary of miscommunication. New York. Graveyard.

It shows how the characters give a different meaning to the same words. I find this a very original idea to show what a character is like and how difficult it is for people to truly understand each other.

Overall this book has given me a lot of new perspectives. Sometimes you come across a book at the right time and place. All the words feel like they were writing down especially for you. With this review I do not attempt to give a summary or deep analysis of the book. I could never do that. What I can do, is try to explain how much I love this book and encourage you to read it and let Kundera sweep you of your feet with his insightful and beautiful writing. I leave you with this passage.

Does he love me? Does he love anyone more than me? Does he love me more than I love him? Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short. [..] (we should) deliver ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.

J.L. Carr - A Month in the Country

Dublin, late in the afternoon.

It had been sunny all day and I'd spent my afternoon walking the city, going nowhere actually. Engrossed by my dinner plans, I walked past a bookshop. I wasn't that hungry yet so I thought I could take a little peek.

I should have known that that plan was doomed.

'I just have to check out one book', is something I've said maybe 50 times and never once stuck to it.

I spent an hour there, browsing through the beautiful books.

The Gutter Bookshop, an independent bookstore,
 situated in the Temple Bar area.

There were so many pretty books there. The artwork on the covers was simply amazing. The Bram Stocker festival was in full swing so they had a whole display of bloody Dracula-esk stories with creepy covers. However, the back wall was what excited me the most. The staff had selected their favorite books and put little sticky notes under if why they'd loved it so much. Which made it, of course, only more difficult to choose. 

Eventually I took the one that said: 'Most beautiful stories I've read in a long time'. 

It was J.L. Carr's A Month in the Country. 

The cover by Roy Menta is so elegant
and pleasing to the eye that even
if I'd hated the book, it still wouldn't have
been a waste of money.

A Month in the Country is set in an English village named Oxgodby in Yorkshire. The main character, Tom Birkin, has come to Oxgodby to uncover a huge medieval wall-painting in the local church. He receives very little salary, just enough for one, maybe two months, hence the title. After that, it's back to London for him. But what kind of life is waiting for him as he returns? The villagers start to wonder. Tom is very quite and keeps to himself. Because Carr only describes scenery and conversations, not Tom's trail of thoughts, you start to wonder about him as well. Throughout the book more and more facts about Tom's life are revealed in a subtle way.

For example, though he never mentions World War one, you find out after a couple pages when somebody is looking at him funny that Tom has a face twitch. Later on, more hints of him being a shell-shocked veteran are being dropped. I like that I had to pay attention to these little clues. The story is about him leaving, to quote Tom: 'hell on earth'. An older version of Tom tells his story, realizing how important that summer in 1920 has been for him. 

Because he falls in love in more than one way. This book is a rare pearl: subtle, delicate and rosy colored like a distant, good memory. You could feel, smell and see everything in Oxgodby. I absolutely recommend it.

Those who need further encouragement; here's an abstract from the writers foreword:

During any prolonged activity one tends to forget original intentions. But I believe that, when making a start my idea was to write an easy-going story, a rural idyll. [..]

Novel-writing can be a cold-blooded business. One uses whatever happens to be lying around in memory and employs it to suit one's end. [..]
Then, again, during the months whilst one is writing about the past a story is colored by what presently is happening to its writer. So, imperceptibly, the tone of voice changes, original intentions slip away. And I found myself looking through another window at a darker landscape inhabited by neither the present nor the past.    J. L. Carr.

Look through that window, is my advice.