Rating: 
Summary: The Unbearable Lightness of Memory
Review: This was a pretty good book, but it didn't ahve a satisfying conclusion. The characters were all individual, and I really identified with them and their misundertandings, but somehow I didn't believe that Josef would give up a beautiful, caring woman to go back and brood over his wife's grave. It seemed kind of stupid. But the writing is beautiful and some parts are really funny and ironic (like the scene where Gustaf tries on a t-shirt that says "Kafka was Born in Prague," or the part about the Iclandic Romantic poet). On the whole, a really easy, fast, and moving story, but not satisfying at the end.
Rating: 
Summary: only what I remember
Review: What do we really recall after reading a terrific book? A few great scenes, the names of the main characters, a theme or two? And so with Ignorance. What do we remember of the place where we grew up, but left later to pursue an adult life? What about that first or second romance - what was her name anyway? Kundera's story answers these questions honestly and vividly. The places we remember and that romance - they were more fantasy then reality. And so we return to home to revisit the fantasy and if we are lucky, rekindle the romance. Reading this book is like taking a trip back home.
Rating:
Summary: only what I remember
Review: What do we really recall after reading a terrific book? A few great scenes, the names of the main characters, a theme or two? And so with Ignorance. What do we remember of the place where we grew up, but left later to pursue an adult life? What about that first or second romance - what was her name anyway? Kundera's story answers these questions honestly and vividly. The places we remember and that romance - they were more fantasy then reality. And so we return to home to revisit the fantasy and if we are lucky, rekindle the romance. Reading this book is like taking a trip back home.
Rating:
Summary: The cost of ignorance
Review: Yes, it would be hard to say this is Kundera's best novel. Yet he is a writer whose not his best is still quite good. It is quite readible and full of wonderfull insights and phrases. One example is "We won't understand a thing about humaon life if we persist in avoiding the most obvious fact: that a reality no longer is what it was when it was; it cannot be reconstructed." In other words, you can't ever truly go home.
I especially enjoyed his comparison between Odysseus and the two Czech characters returning to their country. It's hard to not wonder if this also pertains to Kundura, since he still lives in France even after the fall of communism in the Czech Republic. It is a cerebral, but not an overly taxing read.
Rating:
Summary: ¿Ignorance¿ is bliss.
Review: Yes, the type is large and the margins luxurious, but I consider these virtues (the book as set is easy on the eyes) rather than faults, and certainly how a book is set and how much it is sold for are not matters for literary criticism to contend with. On the other hand, it might help readers and critics to appreciate
"Ignorance" and "Identity" and "Slowness" at their true value, to ease frustrated expectations, if these are eventually bound into a single volume. They are short and pithy (far from "bloated") and thus very much at odds with most novels of the last few decades. In fact, they constitute something of a new literary form, but less adventurous readers can approach them more easily as stories or "novellas" (like Colette's "Gig" and Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea"). "Slowness" has a particular fault -- its farce doesn't quite come off -- , but enough virtues to compensate, and "Identity" is simply misunderstood. (When you put it down, THINK for a moment.) No, none of these works is equal to those of Milan Kundera's great trilogy, "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting", "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", and "Immortality", but what of it? How many novels are? I also agree that Kundera seems to write better (more "lyrically" if you like, but remember please how in his "Life is Elsewhere", originally titled "The Lyric Age", Kundera explicitly disdains lyricism) in his native Czech than in French. I think this inevitable, however, as I think it inevitable that he should
have eventually to give up Czech. Else he would not have been an expatriate; else he could not have created his great trilogy. I disagree that "Ignorance" does not have a satisfying or convincing conclusion. Quite the opposite: it has a particularly satisfying, particularly convincing, and particularly MATURE, SAGE, and TRENCHANT conclusion (a conclusion, by the way, reviewers are charged at amazon.com not to reveal -- in future please respect this rule). One more thing: Kundera explains persuasively in his "The Art of the Novel" and his "Testaments Betrayed" why he, like Franz Kafka, tends not to describe the physiognomies of his characters. If you're going to lay into him for this, you need at least to acknowledge his argument. So, if what I've described does not appeal to you, then don't bother with "Ignorance" -- please. On the other hand, if you're intent on critiquing it, observe the cardinal rules of criticism: 1) distinguish subjective taste and objective appraisal and 2) judge it on its own terms.
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