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Kundera's second novel to be written in French was a bit of let down for me. It felt nothing like the Kundera I've known from previous books. He was trying way to hard here to be French through and through, and even though Identity was written in the mid 90s, it felt more like a script for a nouvelle vague movie of the 50s or 60s. It is also told in a spare prose which I'm not too sure suits Kundera. Having said that, there were still glimpses of his genius, and the 'nothing is quite what it seems' approach did at least engage me to it's finale. Identity is about a couple - Chantal and Jean-Marc, she is recently divorced, he is the younger boyfriend, and Kundera weaves around the intimacies of the two lovers, with flashbacks and dream sequences, uncertain recollections of sex, and other memories that are fitfully bought back to life. And if there's a characteristic motif, it is that of red hot blushing, which has afflicted Chantal since her younger years, which appears to symbolize her desire and embarrassment, her anger and apprehension.

On returning to their apartment after a vacation, in which Chantal complains of feeling old because "Men don't turn to look at me anymore" Jean-Marc decides that what she needs is not a loving gaze but a flood of crude, lustful looks settling on her with no good will, no discrimination, no tenderness or politeness. So he begins to send her anonymous letters describing himself as someone spying on her and finding her very beautiful. Although the letters at first serve to inflame the couple's lovemaking, ultimately they end up backfiring. Through a complex process, the couple suffer what might be called the shameful objectification that Kundera has described elsewhere as a threat in the intrusive modern era. As a result, the two become estranged from each other, thus losing their identities as lovers. As the novel progresses, things grows more and more surreal, and Kundera himself even intervenes at the end. Seeing is a big theme here, where Kundera constantly dwells on the diversities of vision, with lots of glances, of eyes focused, or eyes clouded. The outside world is only really represented by an intrusive sister-in-law, the advertising agency where Chantal works, and a dash through the Channel Tunnel. But what is in fact real and what is not?

His metaphysical musings here aren't as engaging as what I'd come to expect, and the novel lacks Kundera's ironic edge, but there was just about enough bait on the end of the hook to keep me interested.