Identity

May 4, 1998
In his second novel written in French (after Slowness), Czech-born novelist Kundera employs spare prose in the service of a meditation on the precarious nature of the human sense of self. Recently divorced ad executive Chantal, on a vacation with her younger boyfriend, Jean-Marc, believes that she is too old to be considered attractive by other men. For Chantal, identity is defined by the perceptions of strangers. Her dreams, to the extent that they impose a "leveling contemporaneity of everything a person has ever experienced," disturb Chantal. They remind her that she has a past, when she feels that she exists only in the present, that she is who she is only at any given moment. When she returns from her vacation, she begins to receive letters from an anonymous admirer. She suspects each new man she encounters to be the mysterious scribe and fantasizes how each might perceive her. Gradually, these letters, along with a few dreams, affect how Chantal views herself and her relationship with Jean-Marc, until her feelings and identity become unrecognizable both to her lover and to herself. At the end of the book, the unnamed narrator asks: "At what exact moment did the real turn into the unreal, reality into reverie? Where was the border? Where is the border?" Kundera has long explored themes of impermanence and fluctuating identity--often to memorable effect, particularly in The Unbearable Lightness of Being and even in the more recent Immortality. His new novel lacks a certain vitality, however, perhaps because, torn from any historical or political context, Kundera's metaphysical musings aren't very engaging, or perhaps because the book lacks the ironic edge that Kundera's admirers have come to expect.

Barrett Whitener is one of my favorite narrators. Even when he doesn't quite connect with his text, I can always enjoy his pleasant voice, pristine enunciation and intelligent interpretation. Here he approaches a novella by one of the leaders of the Eastern European literary renaissance that preceded the Soviet breakup. Americans may know the Czech-born Kundera best as author of THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING. Evidencing the influences of Joyce, Mann and Kafka, IDENTITY typifies Kundera's lachrymose fatalism, here applied to romantic love in Paris. Such wintery fare could easily turn either boring or depressing in the wrong hands, but here it gives Whitener a chance to display a new maturity, a profound, intuitive epiphany, revealing the book's emotional and philosophical resonances. He makes these intense, closely observed incidents and characters absorbing despite a somewhat awkward translation. All in all, a work of unusual interest is given its due. Y.R. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine