My dad happened to pick up this book at The Book Table and left it lying around, which of course led to me picking it up and looking it over. It piqued my interest, and when I figured out it fulfilled two categories on the Read Harder Challenge, that settled the matter and I grabbed it.
I’m really glad I did. The author, Milan Kundera (of whom I had never heard before this), has a wicked sense of humor. The front jacket says, “Casting light on the most serious of problems, and at the same time saying not one serious sentence.” I think that sums up this book pretty accurately.
It deals with life and death, friendship, romance, history, generation gaps, unwanted pregnancies and the effects they have on both the parents and the children. But it deals with all these issues in a determinedly humorous way.
It starts and ends with a character contemplating the sexualization of the navel. The rest of the book is interspersed with discussions of Stalin and a joke he made about hunting partridges that his officers mistakenly thought was meant to be taken seriously. The characters conclude that was a turning point in history because it signified the end of humor.
This book stands as proof that humor is very much alive and well. The characters are absurd (as they are meant to be), but they’re absurd in very familiar ways. There’s the starving actor who has had to take on a job helping organize and serve at parties, which he hopes will gain him exposure (it doesn’t). There’s the attention whore, and there’s the quiet, unassuming man who gets what he wants by being quiet and unassuming and thereby embodying the title. All the characters are utterly ridiculous, and yet they all remind us of people we know in real life.
The book is hilarious and deadly serious and very well-written (or well-translated, at least) and I definitely recommend it.
What did you guys read this week? Anything that took you by surprise? Anybody else out there doing reading challenges this year? I want to hear all about it!
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