Book Review: Slowness

Author: Milan Kundera

Pages: 132

Genre: Magic realism, Abstract, Pure Fiction.

I have begun to specify more subheadings in my book review so that many people who are concerned about the number of pages can fight their phobias and try to read. Secondly, for others who like to take an overview of this particular book review could easily get the information about the genre of the book (not everyone reads the entire review, but those who do I bless and thank you from the bottom of my heart). As the name suggests, "Slowness", my internet connection took it way too seriously and I had to deal with the customer care for literally an hour to get my internet work for this blog post.

Coming to the book review, this book is actually about the narrator, narrating his tale so it is in a first person. The Narrator sets off for a travel with his wife Vera and halts at a Chateau to spend a night there. His bizarre world of thoughts take on him and he starts to imagine a possible story or stories that could have occurred in this grand Chateau. 

One is the story of Madame de T. and her erotic encounter with a Chevalier which is set up in 18th century. Madame de T. uses the powerful weapon of pleasure in order to distract her husband from her actual lover "Marquis" by using Chevalier. There is a whole new revelation about various passions and a desire to achieve them in this particular story or narrator's imagination. 

Then, is the story of 20th century Entomologist Vincent, who constantly lacks attention and craves for it. He does unusual things with his date to grab attention and ends up losing everything. The same story intervenes with the story of an old Czech entomologist with an unpronounceable name and his frustrations from life. The old person too suffers from the same problem of lack of attention towards his achievements.

Another story which crosses the paths of Vincent and the old Czech "difficult name" guy is that of Bereck and his ex girlfriend whom he considers as his past mistake- Immaculata. There is a triangle here between the non caring Bereck, still caring Immaculata and her current mutt of a boyfriend the cameraman.

All these stories keep crossing each others' paths and we find new and interesting anecdotes coming up for us.

All these stories happen in the narrator's imagination and his wife Vera who is sleeping, dreams about these imaginations and keeps waking up in between believing that the Chateau is haunted. They proceed to leave as soon as its dawn when all that is there in the time and space merges into one and reality merges into imagination.

This book is for those who are a fan of magic realism and abstract works. Salman Rushdie, Haruki Murakami and Gabriel Marquis Garcia fans should definitely have this book by their bedside.