Maybe I've been corrupted by this modern society, or maybe I've spent way too much time reading contemporary “hip” and “cool” books to be able to fully understand Kundera’s way of writing, or maybe I'm just getting ahead of myself and I need to read more than just one book of his, but I expected more from "Farewell Waltz" ( or “La Despedida” since I read it in Spanish ).
It's not that I didn't like the book. I enjoyed the very well written story and the incredibly developed characters, but I thought it was a bit too intense for me. Kundera’s book revolves around a couple of very hectic days in which the main characters, there are plenty of them, find themselves questioning most of what they think of life, and making life-changing decisions and statements in the blink of an eye.
You can see that the author has plenty of theories about the world, questions left unsolved and inquiring remarks he wants to leave you wondering about for long after you have left the balneary, but I found it exhausting to have soo many things to ponder about thrown at you from every angle. It's a small but very powerful book. Filled with everyday actions and possibly very relatable main characters that have enough doubts per minute to leave you sitting down and crying from anguish halfway through the book.
It takes an incredibly smart, critic and pragmatic person to create such a well-written book that can turn such ordinary (in the “day to day” kind of way) actions to take so much meaning and weight. My only problem was that I felt I couldn't digest his thoughts at the speed he threw them at me while the pages went by. I couldn't keep up with characters that had such different and such drastic paths of thought from each other and even from themselves sometimes. I found myself stopping several times to be able to wrap my head around some of what was said, and I still think I would have to read it again (probably with a dictionary, and encyclopedia and a computer beside me) to fully comprehend all Milan Kundera wanted to say.
It's not that I didn't like the book. I enjoyed the very well written story and the incredibly developed characters, but I thought it was a bit too intense for me. Kundera’s book revolves around a couple of very hectic days in which the main characters, there are plenty of them, find themselves questioning most of what they think of life, and making life-changing decisions and statements in the blink of an eye.
You can see that the author has plenty of theories about the world, questions left unsolved and inquiring remarks he wants to leave you wondering about for long after you have left the balneary, but I found it exhausting to have soo many things to ponder about thrown at you from every angle. It's a small but very powerful book. Filled with everyday actions and possibly very relatable main characters that have enough doubts per minute to leave you sitting down and crying from anguish halfway through the book.
It takes an incredibly smart, critic and pragmatic person to create such a well-written book that can turn such ordinary (in the “day to day” kind of way) actions to take so much meaning and weight. My only problem was that I felt I couldn't digest his thoughts at the speed he threw them at me while the pages went by. I couldn't keep up with characters that had such different and such drastic paths of thought from each other and even from themselves sometimes. I found myself stopping several times to be able to wrap my head around some of what was said, and I still think I would have to read it again (probably with a dictionary, and encyclopedia and a computer beside me) to fully comprehend all Milan Kundera wanted to say.