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Summary: One of my top 5 books.
Review: This book was really a revelation to me. It's really hard to explain how wonderfully insightful it is without giving anything away.Suffice it to say that he led me to understand that the "specialness" of relationships is not really held in the place that we tend to think it is. This book can be read quickly or slowly and is very enjoyable either way. Kundera has lived through a lot, and understands how to cry at the sad times, laugh at the funny times, smile at the happy times, and be content with your life throughout.
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Summary: a cascade of epiphanies
Review: "The unbearable lightness of being": this title reeks of some academic existential manifesto, and while philosophical ideas percolates throughout the book, erupting in the form of theoretical digressions, this book is a novel, not a treatise. Mr. Kundera has a wonderful penchant for fanciful tangents that entertain in their own right, but also add depth to the characters. Ultimately, the books through its characters and their digressions, gives a far more fuller picture of the unbearable lightness of being than any didactic philosophy text ever could. This book is not especially heavy or pedantic, but it is a fairly challenging read. It's not something you can read on the train to work.
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Summary: .is this book deeply depressing or pessimistically hopeful??
Review: A complex book set against the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. The main characters Thomas and Tereza struggle to forge an accomodation that seeks to make the most of their disfuctional relationship. One veiw would be that the very fact that they stay together and seem to find some degree of happiness makes this a pessimistically hopefull book. That despite the cards life deals and a fatalistic inability to change fundalmentally disfunctional behaviour (Thomas incessant sexual conquests) that an reconciliation and acceptance of a relationship, that falls well short of satisfying, is possible and congratulatory. Another view, which I hold, is that this accomodation is itself deeply depressing. The book seemed to suggest that change can only be incremental (at best) and that basically everyone just has to put up with life however awful. This seems so bleak and dismal and hopeless that it must be rejected. Life without dreams is no life at all. There is little character development as they simply are the vehicle to present Kundera's broadly existentialistic philosophy of life. Too many times in the book I was left wanting to know more about the Russian invasion. If the book is also a metaphor of this invasion then too much of the detail is lost on someone as ignorant of the players and chronology of the event as I am. Is Thomas and Tereza's move to the country, their tollerance of their imperfect love, their acceptance of where they have arrived at simply a reflection of the fact that you can't change the oppression of the strong. You may hate it, as Tereza hates Thomas' infidelity, but you have to accept it, deal with it and move on. This central dilema leaves you with the question of whether Tereza's acceptance is deeply depressing or pessimistically hopeful??
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Summary: Weight, lightness, and the world of kitsch.
Review: This is an amazing work. Kundera plays with opposing concepts, life and death, heaviness and lightness, dark and light, throughout his story. The characters are given a personality and set into motion. The narrator points out the way the characters think and then analyzes it along with the reader, thus blurring the distinction of whether or not these characters are people of the narrator's world or characters that he has created. And all of it set in a society of kitsch. Sentimentality, words that trigger emotions that we personally do not know nor can comprehend. Its wonderful how, in reading this novel, the reader can try to decide which life is happier: the light or the dark?
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Summary: Kundera the most eloquent lemming
Review: Kundera writes beautifully, hs musing voice takes the reader into meandering journeys into human nature that can surprise us by our own capacity for empathy. However, despite these marvellous insights and his grasp of philosophical tenets, ultimately, Kundera lacks any backbone to ground this novel in any sort of foundation common to the advancement of human civilization and the betterment of the human existence. The characters in this novel are fundamentally nihilistic and inherently pessimistic, providing hours of excruciatingly balletic pathos and melancholy, but eventually dissipates like a bad nap, leaving behind a sensation akin to shellshock. Kundera's exploration of the heaviness and lightness of life would drive a severely depressed man to commit a beautiful suicide, but as for anyone looking for a work that engages one's exploration of meaning and strength in this world with forthrightness, this book is like a wet weak slap in the face.
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Summary: Kundera's best
Review: With this book Kundera describes the life of a young surgeon living in communist Tjecho-Slovakia and his relationships. During the course of the story the protagonist is constantly searching for something that will give weight(meaning) to his life. He does this by having lots of relations with women. In this his social status in in constant decline. His non-compliance with the communist regime finally gets him demoted to window-cleaner and farm-hand. It is here where he finally finds an uncomplicated women who can give meaning (weight). The storyline is constructed as a framework for remarkable philosophical observations. Kundera takes his reader to strange, unconventional places with these observations. His views on life are sometimes disturbing, sometimes funny but always fascinating and these observations add enormous to the impact of the story. These observations are the gems in the book, Kundera shows most of himself in these sections. His ideas are highly original and I enjoyed them very much. Read this book, it is a great work of art.
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Summary: come on now creek
Review: just read Joyce and leave this garbage behind.
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Summary: Dual plot lines detract
Review: Though dual plot lines are supposed to strengthen and highlight parallels between scenarios, Kundera's seem to detract from each other, the intertwining tales being too lively for their own good. Great tales by themselves, the necessity for them to be brought together is up for question.
Rating: 
Summary: a let down
Review: this is not his best work. for the most part it is meaningless drivel. the book of laughter and forgetting is vastly superior. the only thing that saves this book from utter condemnation is that it is a translation and can't be judged too harshly but it is no four star book.
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Summary: Well, what is it?
Review: What is "The Unbearable Lightness of Being?" It is the realization that, with no hope of knowing the right path from the wrong, there can be no wrong path. One is necessarily absolved of mistakes. If you are a Kundera fan, you know the book already. If not, you may be reading this because you know the movie. The movie was entertainment-- read the book to meditate on "the unbearable lightness of being."
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