Rating: 
Summary: Strangely absorbing
Review: More elegant musings from novelist, philosopher and all-round deep thinker Milan Kundera. In this brief but intense novel, Kundera explores the contradictions of identity, how it orientates itself by the clear distinctions between what is familiar and unfamiliar, despite these distinctions being in a continual state of flux, blurred by time and circumstance. A seemingly ordinary couple, Chantal and Jean-Marc, become progressively unsettled and confused by the nature of their relationship. The effects of insignificant events mingle with deeper personal anxieties - the death of Chantal's child and her feelings of unattractiveness, Jean-Marc's romantic fear of destitution and the death of his former friend F.- and threaten to force them into a destructive spiral of reproach and uncertainty. Kundera touches on some interesting subjects, the fragility of certainty, and how friendship and identity when untested by adversity are only partially formed. Whatever its meaning, at least Kundera says his piece quickly (it can easily be read in a day) and with enough skill and eloquence to make it an enjoyable read, if a little bizarre.
Rating: 
Summary: I Am Who I Am
Review: Czech-born Milan Kundera now lives in Paris and writes in French. His characters, not unnaturally, live there as well. Unlike their creator, however, they are not immigrants. Their Frenchness is total. They speak like rive gauche intellectuals and could easily be the protagonists of one of Eric Rohmer's Contes moraux.Their behavior, however, sometimes suggests that they have lived lives elsewhere. For the characters in Identity, one of the best of Kundera's many novels, seem to echo a couple portrayed in one of his early short stories, one called "The Hitchhiking Game," and written in Czech while Kundera was still living in Brno. In "The Hitchhiking Game," a young couple becomes engrossed in a case of lost-and-found identity while playing a flirtatious game. In the end, the girl cries out, "I am me, I am me, I am me." And the reader is left to wonder just who "me" might really be. Chantal, the female protagonist of Identity is the above-mentioned girl's soul sister. Discomfited by blushing during adolescence, Chantal is now at an age where she is facing menopause, and the blushes have returned to haunt her, this time in the form of hot flushes. Hot flushes, however, are the least of Chantal's worries. When she becomes fearful that men are no longing pining for her from afar, her lover, Jean-Marc begins to send her a series of unsigned love letters. This ludicrous gesture, although well-intentioned, leads to an inevitable crisis as Jean-Marc finds himself the engineer of his own undoing. In Jean-Marc's mind, Chantal no longer makes love to him, but to that unknown other, Jean-Marc's own alter ego, his other self. For her part, Chantal does, indeed, try to conjure up, at crucial moments, that hidden admirer...until she deduces the true writer of the letters. This revelation, of course, leads to further complications as Chantal mistakenly assumes her fidelity is being tested. Every move in Identity, as in Kundera's other novels, has ironic consequences and every ironic consequence is precisely delineated. As perceptions change, so do identities, although we are not always sure from what, to what. Jean-Marc, observing how Chantal's entire personality changes when she enters the advertising agency where she works is forced to wonder which of her masks is the real one; the public one or the private? The ad agency itself, is run by a charismatic charlatan named Leroy, a man of no fixed principle. He preaches that the only duty of mankind is to provide flesh for the deity, therefore lovemaking is a religious duty. The agency, with its zealous exclusivity, hints at the mindless dedication demanded by Communism (described as the laughter of angels in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting). Without meaning to do so, Jean-Marc, himself, colludes in this perilous game of amnesia, having absolutely no curiosity about Chantal's previous existence as as wife and the mother of a now-deceased child. In Kundera's novels, people are usually crossing a boundary of some sort. In Identity the boundary is a literal one: the border between France and England. London, home of a priapic fantasy-figure called Britannicus is the omphalos of orgy. And it is in the Channel Tunnel, so cloaked in Plutonian symbolism, that Chantal comes face to face with her own identity as Jean-Marc is trapped outside. From this point on, the terrified lovers enter the world of nightmares and they hold tightly to each other in bed, afraid even to blink for fear the object of their desire (or even love) will be forever altered if the gaze of its worshiper is averted even for a nanosecond. Identity is a short but brilliantly-conceived book and one which is a joy to read. It is definitely one of Kundera's best and will leave you guessing the answer to the phrase that best sums it up: I am who I am.
Rating: 
Summary: Ode to life!
Review: Once I started reading this book, I could not let it down. Kundera managed to get us sucked in a labyrinth of emotions and question the very nature of our feelings as well as face our inner demons through the quest of Chantal, a middle-aged woman, for love and the essence of life. As I am going through a tumultuous time on the emotional level, "Identity" helped me see that one's identity(ies) and our relation to the identities of others are shaped by confusions of our making and that at the end clarity and salvation come from within.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Milan kundera makes his books so fun to read! His style has the elegance of simplicity and intelligence. You can't help but enjoy his half-smiling, eye twinkling stories.
Rating:
Summary: Haunting, bittersweet, and almost terrifying
Review: I would like to begin by saying that the only reason I gave the book four instead of five stars is because it is more appopriately a novella or short story, and I am a little resentful of Kundera's gall at passing it off as a novel. This book, published together with his previous work, Slowness, would have been the perfect size. Alone, however, they both feel rather small. It is true, though, that while there is little there, there is much to be in awe of. Kundera's style, always compact and dense, has become even more so, and his work has become sharper, more focused. This story about two individuals who are trying to be a couple manages to speak to all couples and to all individuals. The depths of thought and emotion which the book explores is dizzying, and several scenes make the reader both desire and fear the turning of the next page--a wonderful work from a wonderful author.
Rating:
Summary: Provocative Identities...
Review: One of Milan Kudera's short stories where Chantal and Jean Marc really take their lives to a different dimension. Very provocative in many ways, Jean Marc tries in a strange way to make Chantal feel better about something that she complains about, that gesture by Jean Marc and its consequences puts both of them in very wierd situations. They both feel that new identities have just surfaced and they just keep experiencing one thing after another... Kundera's style forces your imagination to live the book more than you expect, just a great thinking process that leads you to that interesting end.
Rating:
Summary: A Remarkable Book!
Review: Not quite the heavyweight anchor of "Immortality." That said, this book is well worth it. Along with "Slowness", Kundera originally wrote this in French, not his native Czech like his earlier novels. Provocative in emotion and in thought....
Rating: 
Summary: An attempt at writing a novella
Review: The tone of the sentences is melancholic, but warm. This novella can easily be read in an hour or two. This is an introspective novella with a Hitchcock-like "love" theme. The narrative elucidates how a man in love gradually slips into paranoia with regard to his beloved. Kundera demonstrates insight into the kinds of games some people play in their own minds so as to keep otherwise boring relationships from becoming hopelessly uninteresting. I won't give away the turning point, though an average reader will no doubt guess what it is after the first thirty pages. I commend Kundera for at least trying to bring back a classic genre. Unfortunately, he does not come close to the beauty and intricacy of such masters of the skill as Goethe and Thomas Mann. The problem with this novella, as with so many other works similar in flavor and tone, is that the "identities" of the characters are ultimately quite dull and quotidian. This, no doubt, contributes to its popularity. Nevertheless, I don't regret having read it.
Rating:
Summary: ECONOMICAL in all but Attitude & Truth . . .
Review: HOW INFREQUENT it is to understand you share a tiny portion of time in history with someone so substantial; so outstanding above all others in a the similar craft. Milan Kunera is why - in a pocketbook sense - I read; and he, his works then, this, and those to come are the very best answer I have when some lover of writing tells me that our days are too short; and world history too immense to spend any of our time reading literature. I CAN NOT (and wouldn't if I could) tell you WHY Identity is worth of a read. If you've ever bumped-up against Kundera by choice or college coercion, this small work is part of his best; certainly the best since ULB - and that's all you will need to know. If you are part of that crowd, I can guess only that its smallness is why you've not yet read the book. SOMEWHERE BETWEEN Pynchon's Mason & Dixon and Wolfe's Man in Full this one missed my attention. That was my fault, and that was my loss until yesterday. the Teddy Rex diptych by Edmund Morris was well-made and properly presented;--grand and loud. This tiny offering from Milan Kundera trumps it. IF YOU HAVE NEVER read Milan Kundera, begin here and you shall begin a never affection for literature. The work is his latest; certainly one of his greatest, and there are many great works that came before it. With the shelves of fiction weighted with so much rubbish here is something so poetic in presentation, beautiful in truth, that it almost makes up for the last 50 years. Note: Mr. & Mrs. Hollywood, please stay clear of this work.
Rating:
Summary: More like anonymity
Review: Unfortunately, it seems Milan Kundera has nothing to write about these days. Identity struck me as little more than a wet dream concocted in his idle moments. The characters are devoid of any identity. What transpires is more a tale of anonymity, a hollowness of being that his characters, and maybe even Mr. Kundera himself, cannot escape. I was thoroughly disappointed, especially given the much more substantial books that Mr. Kundera has written in the past. The brevity of the book is its only saving grace.
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