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In attempting to review The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Paperback) by Milan Kundera; perhaps I should admit that I have read it twice and do not think my review will be as penetrating and perspicacious as others. My first read was shortly after the movie had come to my town and I think I was too influenced by the movie. My second read helped me to see what I missed and to have a better notion of how much still gets past me. This is not a book about entertaining the reader it is about asking the reader to delve into a lot of ideas. To a deep-thinking philosopher, much of the philosophy of the book is trivialized by lack of detail. To others the thinking is not from their echo chamber and therefor this is a bad book. Mostly the negative reviewers want the writer to write a book for that individual reader; that is to write a different book. Milan Kundera wrote this one. I admit that it can be a challenge, but his use of language and the thoughts he asks of his reader as such that I am glad for the chance to enjoy the book while maybe not getting to its deepest core.

Kundera proposes that in life, one can be free, and therefor light, or bound to others and therefore heavy. The book then explores if living light proposes its own unbearable weight. Our central character is a Czechoslovakian doctor. He like sex and has not difficulty getting it and feels no need to form a relationship with his sleeping partners. Many of whom are married women. Shortly into the book he will find himself almost unwittingly tied a woman who had been a casual hook up, but who decides that he is her escape and ultimately the man she will marry. He of course will continue to sleep around, which makes him intolerable to many “woke� readers. One of his closest friends is a female artist, who makes a point of betraying everyone, until the author askes: After you betray parents, lovers and country, and there is no one left to betray; your life may be light, but is it bearable? Somehow the artist, being a woman, does not attract the same disparagement as the doctor.

There are two elements that escape the attention of the many reviewers who focus on the doctor and his wife and his women. He is also a political entity. He lives in and during the Russian takeover of Czechoslovakia. Part of the weight he carries is the weight of a country that is not ‘itself, but carries with it all the demands of nationality, and a host of what Kundera will call Kitsch and lies. Neither can be ignored or disparaged and both are part of how we all live.

In the case of the doctor, trivial things he does, says or have been said will carry weight. He lives in a world of domestic spies and professional betrayers. He is not asked to give up women, he is asked to to compromise. That is betray himself.

If the question is: can a person be free or must a person carry the burdens of relationships? I am not sure that The Unbearable Lightness of Being answers this question. Kundera made me care about not entirely sympathetic people, in part because they are not intended to be role models, but realistic examples of how the shades of the question might play-out. Along the way are expressions and example of language as a way to tease one into thinking more deeply.