Slowness
Okay, cards on the table time... I'd read the three books for which Milan Kundera is best known - 'The Joke', 'The Book of Laughter and Forgetting' and 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' - and I loved them all. In fact, I'd just re-read TULOB again and was as impressed and immersed as last time, the simplistic, anti-leftist rants with which it concludes aside (strangely, I didn't remember those from my previous reading). So much did I enjoy it that I decided to read one of his later works that I hadn't tried before. And so I picked up 'Slowness'... I'm going to re-title it 'Slightness' (unbearable, but there it is...). Is that due to the philosophical slights of hand that the author performs? No. To me, it really did feel rather insubstantial. The novella comprises two romances staged across a single night, one set in current times and the other in the eighteenth century. I think that the modern day episodes were supposed to be funny. I just found them rather silly. The philosophical elements felt bolted on. None of the characters were believable. I wanted to like it. Although it pains me to say it, if I'd come to this book first, I might never have read the others. Perhaps I've missed the point. Please, someone persuade me that I have...
