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Original poster

Has anybody read The Unbearable Lightness of Being?

26 replies

LightandAiry · 05/09/2022 17:54

Hi, I read this 30 years ago; I went to Prague and read Anna Karenina after it as I found the book strange, unusual and intriguing.

It looks like I've killed my book club this month.....! They couldn't get into the book and looks like it won't happen. I feel a bit sheepish.

OP posts:
WeThreeKingsofOrientAre · 05/09/2022 18:06

No, but I watched the film once. Eccentric.

Fleur405 · 05/09/2022 18:08

Oh this is one of my favourite books! It is rather sad and a bit depressing but the writing it’s beautiful.

GraceJonesBiggestFan · 05/09/2022 18:11

I love it. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is also wonderful.

AnneLovesGilbert · 05/09/2022 18:11

I loved it. The musings about Jesus pooing were very thought provoking 😆

It’s beautiful.

eatingapie · 05/09/2022 18:12

I really didn’t like this book and felt like it hadn’t aged well - my parents both really liked it and read it at the time it was published so maybe it’s just a bit out of step right now? As in when it came out in context it worked. I found it overall smarmy and some of the depictions of women were really off putting for me. I can’t remember the passages in particular now but I know I felt the ick when I read it aged about 23/24. Some of the writing was very beautiful though. Well translated from French.

PhotoDad · 05/09/2022 18:12

I read it a long time ago and rather enjoyed it. Then I heard someone refer to it as "The Unbearable Triteness of F*cking" and I'm afraid I can't get that out of my head!

eatingapie · 05/09/2022 18:13

It is such a downer when someone doesn’t like a book you recommend though - definitely sympathise with that feeling!

eatingapie · 05/09/2022 18:14

@PhotoDad omg I will never get that out of my head either now 😂

MenaiMna · 05/09/2022 18:18

I much preferred "The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth" by Malcolm Pryce

IrishMamaMia · 05/09/2022 18:22

Loved it in my early 20's. Loved the writing and imagining Prague in that era. Also adored Juliet Binoche and DD Lewis in the film.
Grown women me would be too angry at the male character and his philandering though.

Twooforjoy · 05/09/2022 18:26

I adored this book in my early twenties too and his other books - I ate them up. I also wondered about reading it again lately and if it had aged but even from memory I think his justification of philandering would have me in a rage. But then again maybe not. I still might try it again. Have you re-read it OP? Maybe we could do it here!

JaninaDuszejko · 05/09/2022 18:29

I also read it about 30 years ago, it was massive at the time but no-one seems to talk about it anymore. I remember it seeming quite dreamy but assume like @IrishMamaMia I'd get annoyed at the main character now. Having said that I am a big swot who always read the book for book club and got quite annoyed at those who didn't so feel your pain (meanwhile my sister got an English degree without finishing any books).

crispinglovershighkick · 05/09/2022 18:32

Lol this is the story of every book I chose for book group and (for me) virtually every book chosen by the others, I love the people in the group but I concluded that it wasn't for me. What I want from a book group is for people to love what I love (iabu Grin) and sadly they didn't.

I remember reading TULoB on a train, continuing to read as we arrived at the terminus, then looking up to find I was the only person left so I must have found it engrossing but I don't think I enjoyed it very much. I believe it was lent to me by my high school best friend who used to recommend all kinds of pretentious arty nonsense (usually passed down from her older boyfriend) that I consumed eagerly because I loved her and wanted to be like her but in the back of my mind I filed it away in the Hmm folder. Now I fancy rereading it!

crispinglovershighkick · 05/09/2022 18:36

(I think I read it while still in high school which would have been 1985ish.)

JaninaDuszejko · 05/09/2022 18:44

Just pulled out my copy to read. It would definitely annoy me now. On the first page there is this sentence which is showing its age:
We need take no more note of it than of a war between two African kingdoms in the fourteenth century, a war that altered nothing in the destiny of the world, even if a hundred thousand blacks perished in excruciating torment.

eatingapie · 05/09/2022 18:59

I feel there’s a bit where Sabina does a poo but it’s sexual? I remember thinking oh ffs at that bit cos it just didn’t add anything. Interestingly she’s the only character I remember and I couldn’t tell you anything about the main plot. I do remember a breaking the 4th wall bit which is always dangerous territory.

Original poster
LightandAiry · 05/09/2022 20:42

It was a very risky choice for a book club, but I wasn't expecting people to find the book so bad they'd all cancel! I agree about the misogyny, the treatment of women in the book is from another time and pretty offensive.

On the first page it's a strange example to give of seeing Hitler's portrait of evoking nostalgia, but he was making the point that the past in our minds is distorted by our present perception, and I think Kundera later relates that to Franz's idealised worship of Sabina which exists in his imagination. It's a complicated read.

OP posts:
Original poster
LightandAiry · 05/09/2022 20:45

Sabina doing a pop in front of Tomas? Eatingapie? I'll have to look at that bit again...it's such a complex book different people remember different things.

OP posts:
dudsville · 05/09/2022 20:58

I read all of Kundera's books when I was younger. I think they're beautiful. This thread makes me want to reread them and see if i would still appreciate them today! But anotherv these had also inspired me to reread Steinbeck, so that won't be happening any time soon!

FreudayNight · 05/09/2022 21:22

eatingapie · 05/09/2022 18:13

It is such a downer when someone doesn’t like a book you recommend though - definitely sympathise with that feeling!

Isn’t it just. I got it as a Christmas present from the live of my life up to that point. Was not the bowler hat reverie he may have been expecting.

A set of rather unlikeable characters,

Hardbackwriter · 05/09/2022 21:29

Oh god, when I was a PhD student and having a very pretentious existential crisis my even more pretentious housemate suggested I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I think he thought he was being helpful, but it very much was not! Though it made more sense that he thought it was such a wonderful, deep book when he then started cheating on his (lovely) girlfriend and explained to me that it was because she didn't challenge him enough.

JaneJeffer · 07/09/2022 14:43

I read it back in the 90's and the only thing I can remember from it is someone going to the loo being described as sitting on the wide end of a sewer pipe or something like that 🤢

jesusjoan · 07/09/2022 14:52

The book was HUGE late 80s/early 90s but suspect a lot of people at the time claimed to enjoy it for pretension sake even if they didn't. Think the context of the Cold War at the time and the Wall coming down was a big draw of the book and then the film (and Daniel Day Lewis)

mathanxiety · 07/09/2022 14:54

I ead it. Slogged it out to the end. I couldn't fling it across the room as hard as I wanted to.

mathanxiety · 07/09/2022 14:54

*read