Rating: 
Summary: Less than Kundera
Review: "Identity", an examination of one woman's sense of self, was not what I had hoped for. I consider myself a Kundera devotee, had I read this book first that might not be so. It's not "bad", it's just not all that it good be. I found interesting questions posed, vintage Kundera. However, the ending strikes me as a cheat, as if the publisher's deadline had arrived and Kundera did not know where to take his characters. Therefore, I consider this to be "Less than Kundera." It's worth a read, but be prepared for post-readus-frustratus. Alternately, I highly recommend "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." A truly beautiful story. It illuminates so much, here-to-fore unthought of. I've read it at least five times. Which in my history, puts it right next to "Raise High the Roofbeams Carpenters" and "Franny and Zoey" by Salinger.
-MA
Rating: 
Summary: Cutting
Review: A frightening look into how fragile relationships really are. His style is wonderful.
Rating: 
Summary: Explores important issues very well
Review: Chantal is a divorced working woman and a mother to a deceased son. Jean-Marc is her lover. As often happens with lovers, the deeper they fall into the mists of love, the more irrational, quixotic thoughts flow into their heads, not always with the intended results. One of Jean-Marc's shocks the fragile Chantal, already experiencing an identity crisis, over the type of edge, many of us unsatisfied and confused by life both fear and are enticed by by. I've never read a better, more moving account of these romantic archetypes than this short, to-the-point novel.
Rating:
Summary: Unsettling, unpredictable
Review: A short novel, and for Kundera uncharacteristically focused. This time around, Kundera focuses on the theme of identity. Who are we and why? What do we really know about the people around us? Jean-Marc and Chantel are lovers who are the story's two protagonists and struggle with these themes. Jean-Marc can only identify with victims of tragedy if he superimposes in their place the woman that he loves. He connects with the world through her, and fears that she will someday transform into someone that he doesn't recognize. Chantel, for her part, wears "two faces", and transforms into another person when she is in the office - complete with new gestures and a new voice. Everyone manages to act without quite understanding his or her own motives, and Jean-Marc and Chantel manage to involve themselves in a masquerade that ends up going terribly wrong. As usual, Kundera's presence as narrator/novelist hovers heavily over the novel, but unlike his lengthier works like Unbearable Lightness and Immortality he allows the characters to communicate the novel's message via their statements and actions, rather than halting the narrative periodically to interject his trademark philosophical lectures. This, along with the novel's short length, gives Immortality a tightness of plot and coherence that exceeds some of Kundera's other works. The two protagonists are three-dimensional and convincing, but I sometimes get the impression that they're reading from a script. I can't get over the fact that I often find myself thinking "people don't talk like that in real life." Identity doesn't rank among Kundera's finest, but it is an inventive and intelligent novel that tells an entertaining story while offering some interesting insights.
Rating:
Summary: Simply the Best!!
Review: Milan Kundera - what can i say about this writer?? He is a bundle of whole lot of enthusiasm, fantasy, magical prose, and lyrical poetry...I was first introduced to him by my mother and through the book, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"- according to me one of the best!! Till I was presented, "Identity" by one of my close friends... Identity is all about love, misunderstandings and dreams. It is a tale of Jean and Chantal - lovers who are not only doubtful about their love, but also about their very existence...their identity...the story takes place in a hotel room where Chantal is waiting for Jean...She is years older than him and this is when the insecurity seeps in. she feels that "men don't look at her the way they used to", for a brief moment the reader feels that she is referring to men around her - but on further probing the story it is all about Jean. When jean hears this, he resorts to writing her anonymous love letters -full of praise of her beauty, life and zest...and then from here there are complications, love stories that are spanned between reality and dreams...love's longing and loss...milan kundera writes complexly but with a strong sense of surrealism... To read "Identity" is like feasting on a chocolate cake with lots of love thrown i for good measure...
Rating:
Summary: like a mirror to my face
Review: I think that Kundera is an amazing writer. His understanding 0f the human spirit and the human penchance for fallacy is unparalled. The Unbearable lightness of being changed the way i viewed relationships and myself- Indentity has made me momentarily relieved that I am not in a relationship. Simply written yet intricately developed, 'Identity' causes us to hold a mirror up to our face and causes us to question how we really view friendship, love and companionship. Are these inherently selfish acts and does love also breed dependency and virtual madness? The book is claustrophobic and uncomfortable in parts, bringing the reader into the discomfort and rawness of relationships, presenting the obessive side of love affairs as linear expectations rather than as disruptive anomalies. The characters of Chantal and jean Marc elicit both pity and disgust, yet at the end they remain in each others arms despite the uncertainties and misdirected acts of their association. Whether or not the relationship survives in the future because of their love for being with each other or their fear of being apart is a question that the author allows the reader to answer in his/her mind.
Rating:
Summary: Who am I?
Review: Kundera plays with the fractured self in this book. I agree that the core of the book centers around the unknowable "other". Often times we think we know someone and we find we are surprised. Kundera loves to play in the field of human relations and this book is not exception. If you take the book for itself, then you will see a richly textures interplay between two people Chantal and Jean-Marc and the personal "issues" that plague them. If you place this in the context of the richly ornamented and finely crafted works that are The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Immortality, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting - the book looks less like a unique work and more like Laughable Loves. The difference between this and The Hitchhiking Game is that the HHG plays around in the area of role playing while Chantal seems to be really to "find" rather than "create" herself. I guess we are all in some sense "creating ourselves". Kundera does like to work around in the dangerous area of fidelity and makes it all a matter of choice. I am confused about the statement made by the reader from Chicago who wrote on march 30, 2001 "He attempts, instead to achieve what Kafka did: the creation of an alternate reality". As much as I love Kafka, I have a hard time placing them on the same page. Anyway, good observation. I would place Kafka in the realm of Borges and as an inspiration for Kundera - but the two are mutually exclusive. All this said, on its own it is a good book but does not deserve a place beside his classics. Miguel Llora
Rating:
Summary: The Unbearable Heaviness of Audacity
Review: With his French novels ("Identity" and "Slowness"), Milan Kundera breaks away from his standard form: the seven-part construction of his Czech novels. He attempts, instead, to achieve what Kafka did: the creation of an alternate reality. The construction of the French novels is therefore less audacious than what we are used to from Kundera, but there is, perhaps, more intelligence (if such a thing could be possible--perhaps we should say a more solid and self-aware intelligence) in the ideas therein. Instead of creating an (audacious) effect, they create a (subtle) world.
Rating:
Summary: With this book Kundera became my favourite author
Review: This is a brilliant exploration of identity by one of the masters of European literature. Kundera's prose is lucid, (post)modern and gripping. This fascinating look at identity, at love, and those fleeting moments that shape our lives will stay with you for a long time. Read it! Read his work! You'll love it all!
Rating:
Summary: A glimpse in the abyss
Review: As of yet, the deepest portrait of human soul from Kundera's evilishly masterful laboratory of life. Some of the reviewers complain that the book repeats old themes and that the old master seems to be on his way down the tubes. These people are simply missing the point. It is true, "the theme" of fragility, absurdity, irony and unintended tragedy of human encounters, which is common for most of Kundera's works, stands out. This theme, though, is not the subject of the story anymore. It is a method, which provides the author with the scene at which the real drama develops. And this drama opens completely new landscapes to be explored. What is the real drama? The love story going toward a tragic climax? Not really. It is a story of discovering the causal forces of our life. To achieve this, Kundera uses an allegory of two machine operators, who are not in the complete control of the vehicles they were endowed with. Actually, the vehicles themselves have hidden agendas they use to control the operators. And who is the "operator"? It is the Cartesian observer, lost in the postmodernist ambiguity of multiple drafts of his identity. These are the protagonists. It's us. And realizing this gives me chills. I have to admit that the captivating novel let me to believe that there will be more at the end. That the master will provide his answer to the question WHY? It just can't be that the only free will we have is to choose between to be happy or bitter. Milan, don't stop at the edge of the abyss. We would like you to take us to its exploration. Maybe, eventually, we will find the firm ground to step on.
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