Rating: 
Summary: This book scarred me
Review: A few years ago, my boyfriend gave me this book to read. The main character, Tomas, seriously disturbed me. After I finished reading my boyfriend said he was a lot like Tomas! Not encouraging. Anyways, just now a friend gave me a different book by Kundera and I'm a bit scared to read it! I still remember the image of those women marching around the pool and Tomas' insistence on the 1% difference. Kundera really got to the heart of what some women feel like, and some men, and stuck a knife in and twisted it. I give this book a high rating because it was powerful, even if disturbing.
Rating: 
Summary: Is Love the Anchor of Uncertainty's Ship ?
Review: This is either a book of philosophy masquerading as a novel, or a novel about the lives of four or five characters with pretensions to be a book of philosophy. Either way, it's an amazing work. Since it is well-known and no doubt, well-reviewed, I might not be able to say anything new here. Kundera deals with his characters in a rather sketchy way, using them to pose a number of questions, rather than to go into great psychological depth. Yet, even there, the characters Tomas and Tereza do come through well. Their moods and motivations, even their dreams, hold a reader's attention. A couple of the others, Sabina and Franz, maybe Franz' wife, are very light indeed. Kundera is interested in sex and love, in the fact that they tie people down, in the fact that they are so fickle, so gosssamer light, yet so important. In a time when ideology and/or political oppression create craziness or stupidity and the common sense of daily life is overthrown---as in post-1968 Czechoslovakia and maybe pre-Gulf War II America---love and sex are more or less what is left for people to hang on to. Kundera also ponders the choices that people make, and the extremely haphazard way these choices come about, based perhaps on endless strings of coincidence. This is not a novel long on plot. Rather it is a vehicle for some very intelligent musings. When living under oppressive rulers "is it better to shout and thereby hasten the end, or to keep silent and gain thereby a slower death ?" What is the nature of love ? Have you ever read the philosophy of excrement or kitsch ? You can find them here. Man is a cow parasite, he tells us, (though he's probably talking about a certain percent of humanity only) and goes on to say that attitude towards animals is a fundamental moral test of Man. We've failed. As you live, you write the story of your life. You don't get the chance to "write" an alternative story; there are no comparisons for you. History is the same, he says, as light as individual human life. There is no possibility of comparison of chances either in history or life. These are only a small sample of the interesting thoughts and ideas Kundera mulls over. If that sort of book is your bag, you're going to love this one. The choice you make by reading it, may evolve into something completely different in your life, have totally different repercussions sooner or later. Will you recognize that ? After all, each book of any consequence you read leaves an imprint. THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING will definitely do so.
Rating: 
Summary: Kitsch
Review: Interesting plot and wonderful prose style, but pretentious and full of unnecessary political grumbling and insults. Pure kitsch. I felt a bit disappointed cause I know he can do better than that. If you never read anything by Kundera before, avoid this book. Start with 'Immortality'.
Rating:
Summary: Unbearably light
Review: Featherweight, often (very) funny, this book, highly regarded, left me utterly flat. If it weren't for its delicate prose it would be unbearably pretentious. What story there is fails to engage on an emotional level. (Even the subplot involving the dog left me unmoved.) The characters are interchangeable ciphers whose thoughts and actions are explained, rather than shown, thus keeping them at the proverbial arm's length. Unfortunately, there is no real compensation in terms of insight; whatever epiphanies there are are never the characters' but the author's, and amount to very little. The book's philosophic musings might garner an A minus on a college term paper but one has come to expect more from published literature, especially published literature that has been reviewed as favorably as this novel has. Thus, this book fails to satisfy either as good (let alone great) philosophy or particularly good literature, and the political tracts that surface from time to time are tiresome. To see how an emotional story can be embedded within a real "novel of ideas," which still leaves room for political diatribe, the reader of this review is directed toward "A Sentimental Education" by Flaubert. The present book, while beautifully written, seems to me a miscalculation.
Rating:
Summary: Well-written, but a bit pretentious
Review: This was the first Milan Kundera novel I've read. Overall, I really enjoyed it. It was emotionally stimulating and intellectually daring. However, it was also incredibly pretentious. It felt as though Kundera was was costantly attempting to remind me of how profound his ideas are. I gathered that fact simply from the originality of this novel, and I didn't need Kundera to keep reminding me. This was really the only flaw I found in the novel. All in all, an exceptional novel-
Rating:
Summary: impossible not to find yourself somewhere in this book
Review: A friend lent me this book at a time in my life where I was confronting some of the same issues that the protagonists here were. I don't think this is a book about sex or war or infidelity. It is about choice. Sex, war, etc. are metaphors used to convey the choices we (and those around us) make, and ultimately, how we respond to choice. Each character experiences some sort of crisis which demands a choice. Some choices are made swiftly and strongly (Sabina leaving Geneva once her lover Franz leaves his wife), other choices seem to come after years of indecision, and perhaps a change in the character's desires/needs (Tomas finding happiness in the country). Each one of the main characters finds some aspect of happiness in finally coming to terms with their lives and themselves, yet the characters are all so different. One of this book's most important questions for me is: are we more different than we are alike (Tomas' 1% of difference among women)? And if so, does that difference make some of us fundamentally incompatible, destined to live parallel lives without ever having the opportunity to connect and learn from the one who is deemed incompatible? I think we stand to learn the most from people/situations which vex us, provided we can maintain our centerdness and approach the tension (like that between Tomas & Tereza) with an eye to what it might help us learn about ourselves.
Rating:
Summary: 300 page symphony
Review: Ezra Pound once said something to the effect of "A poet that is not interested in music is not a good poet". I don't know if Milan Kundera ever heard this piece of advice but he certainly seems to have taken heed to it. Very much like a symphony, this book contains very musical aspects such as repetition of key phrases, notes (or words if you will) that seem unimportant then subconsioulsy affect every other part of the piece, and a need to truly be listened to. "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" refuses to be background music. I beleive trying to tell you what the book is about betrays one of it's core messages, which is you can only know what something means to you, commmunication is a hopelesss but necessary exercise. Find a quiet place, read the book slowly, and truly contemplte the things it has to say. You'll be glad you did.
Rating:
Summary: One Of The Great Novels Of The Late 20th Century
Review: Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" is more than a mere meditation on rampant sexual pleasures. More to the point it is a brilliant evocation of what Czechoslovakia endured during the Soviet invasion of 1968 and its brutal aftermath. It is also a brilliant look at how lives can be shaped into various shades of profundity and pleasure. Although the story is told from the perspective of the two main protagonists, the surgeon Tomas and his lover Tereza, darting back and forth between both in both space and time, the most fascinating passages deal with their brief exile in Geneva and their relationship with Tomas's friend and ex-lover, Sabina. Within this lovers' trinity, Sabina comes across as the most mature, well-adjusted individual, showing how she becomes both an artistic and financial success as her art wins for her considerable acclaim in the West. Kundera's graceful prose is some of the most lyrical I've come across in a European novel, writing in a style that seems more suggestive of Borges, Garcia Marquez and Rushdie than any of his Central European contemporaries. Admittedly this isn't an easy read, but one well worth taking the time to savor and admire.
Rating:
Summary: Hmmm... Sublime? Beautiful? Wonderful?
Review: I wish I had the prosaic style of a Milan Kundera to express just how much this book moves me. Kundera's writing to me is an absolute pleasure to read. I have read this book four times over the last five years, and each time I feel like I am reading it anew. I have found most of his books to be that way, but with "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" I come away feeling good. For some reason, I never remember the details of the book, I get lost in the wash of the words as the enter my eyes and swirl around my brain. I really get caught up in it as if I were listening to a great piece of music. Reading over what I have written, it sounds silly to me, but that is how I feel when reading this book. I feel like I am experiencing something wonderful.
Rating: 
Summary: enh
Review: This one was not as good as they say. It is a good literature book for people who love stephen king and michael crighton. But if you are looking for something more than an airplane read, look elsewhere. It is somewhat sensationalist and a bit hypocritical. It is enjoyable enough, but almost any other slavic writer is better than kundera.
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