BOOK REVIEW OF 'THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING' by someone

'THE HEAVIER THE BURDEN, THE CLOSER OUR LIVES COME TO THE EARTH, THE MORE REAL AND TRUTHFUL THEY BECOME' BY MILAN KUNDERA

What makes the best novelists brilliant is the way they go about saying thing we al know - a writer who thinks he's handing us profound insights into the universe and humanity, like Kundera, is simply pontificating.

The unbearable lightness of being is a particularly bad example of Kundera's style as we get not only the egotistical existentialist meandering, but also transparnt characters, eroticism recycled from previous books, and rather stiff prose. Don't get me wrong, I do like some of Kundera's books. "The Joke" is the only real novel he wrote (no coincidence it's his first) as the insights are part of the novel itself and not the mini essays, and I love "Immortality" which is such as extreme example of his style that is actually works.

But "Unbearable lightness" simply is simply irritating, as it tries to make itself a real story, like "The Joke" - while also going on for pages about Kundera's marvelous insights into human nature. Avoid this book, unless you're as easily impressed by this stuff as most of the readers are.