The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Unbearable-Lightness-Being-Milan-Kundera/dp/0060932139

I thought about how I would summarize the novel but I decided that it was pretty much impossible to really give this novel a summary, so I’ll just tell you the fundamentals of the story and just trust that you understand. Basically it is about these four people and their tangled, intricate relationships with one another in a time where the world is fighting against each other. However, through these four characters Kundera portrays his philosophy of life. Thus, the novel becomes not very plot based but more involved in the workings of the mind and society—especially in the ideas of lightness and weight.
The thing that ultimately prompted me to choose this novel was its title. It just seemed so poetical and almost dream-like that I couldn’t resist. Thankfully, the rest of the text followed the title perfectly. Kundera is able to craft a novel on the basis of beautiful, yet horrifying dreams and thoughts, and trigger many emotions and explain many phenomena through his use of striking language.
My one complaint of this novel would be that Kundera is too forward with his interpretations of his characters. I can see how Kundera is exploring his characters and philosophies whilst writing the novel and that his statements of what each action means is just him trying to find the answers himself but, I wish that not all his interpretations would be in the text but rather subtly inserted so that it can be left up for interpretation.
The novel was very thought-provoking and ultimately I believe that Kundera creates a novel that I look at as a masterpiece. I would not however recommend this to everyone. One who reads this novel I believe has to be patient since it is not very plot oriented but rather more focused on the complex ideas of the individual and society. Kundera contradicts the traditional, clear, organized form of a novel and instead crafts a book that acts almost as a record of the stream of consciousness for four characters, with the occasional statement by the author (which reminds us that these characters are rather a continuation of the thoughts that are in his mind).