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Kundera is an unconventional writer, to say the least. If you are looking for fully fleshed characters or a smooth plot, The Unbearable Lightness of Being is not for you. Kundera merely uses plot and characters as tools or examples to explain his philosophy about life, and that is what this novel is all about. He will provide a glimpse of his characters' lives, hit the pause button and then go on to explain all about what just happened, the philosophy and psychology which drives the lives of his characters and often real lives as well. In keeping with this format, the novel is fragmentary in structure. It is easy to see how a reader can get annoyed at the author's getting lost in his philosophical musings so very often. But if you can find some meaning in those, the novel just might work for you.

Decisions and dilemmas. Kundera's characters seem to searching for an elusive something, trying to find that perfect place in life where they would want to live forever. However, it is difficult to know for sure the direction in which that perfect place lies. If they find their current lives suffocating, going the other way could be liberating. But is it worth leaving behind all that will be lost? The moment they take a step ahead, they begin feeling the pull of what they had just turned their back to. Often the choice is not between perfection and imperfection, it is a trade-off.
The ability to shape our own lives, to some extent at least, is a power. Sometimes it can be a burden too. Specially when there is no way of knowing what waits for us at the next corner. Do we choose being happy today at the expense of 'What ifs..' plaguing us tomorrow? Or do we put us through an ordeal now in anticipation of it paying off in the future? What if we end up in a mess, unable to turn back?

"And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not run in circles; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition."

Sometimes we can find the right answers only in retrospect.

"We can never know what we want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come."

Kundera speaks of the irony of human life. Having only one life to live, makes the life choices difficult and onerous. It is also because of this very fact of living only one life that these life choices do not have much weight in the bigger picture. And it is this irony which causes the unbearable lightness of being. The only thing that relieves us from this unbearable lightness are fortuitous occurences which, love it or hate it, have a say in making up our lives.

"They (human lives) are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurence (Beethoven's music, death under a train) into a motif , which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual's life."


Love. Kundera does not speak of love in a poetic, all-beautiful manner. What happens when one of the characters packs her life in a suitcase and goes off to be with her lover? Is there music in the air, fluttering butterflies? No. Her stomach makes a rumbling sound the moment she sees her lover...because she hasn't eaten anything all day.

"If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders."

Finding love does not miraculously solve all their problems. Love is often accompanied by jealousy, mistrust, lies, deceit, pain. Yet they do find some strength in love and do all they can to hold on to it.

""Love is a battle," said Marie-Claude, still smiling. "And I plan to go on fighting. To the end.""


Along with these, Kundera touches upon a few other themes as well. Some of those hit the right note, while there were parts that I found trite or pretentious or simply lacking any sense. Take this for example. One of the characters sleeps with every other woman who crosses his path. Kundera philosophizes his physical desire and explains it as a deep-seated intellectual curiosity. Naah, I don't buy that. Then there were pretending-to-be-deep quotes that just went over my head.

"Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love.

Umm, What?

Another thing I found odd was that the author breaks the fourth wall and tries to be defensive about the novel. He comes in and explains how he is not just telling a story, but investigating human lives. He tells us that the characters are merely figments of his imagination (so we shouldn't expect them to be realistic). He tells us that it is wrong to chide a novel for mysterious coincidences (so we shouldn't question the unrealistic events in the plot).
Agreed there are some flaws, but I would have forgiven them even without the author explaining himself away.