After finishing The Jonkheer's Wife, about the Nazi occupation of Holland, I'm now reading The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, about the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia.
Well, both are about other stuff, too. On the whole I liked Jonkheer's Wife a lot better.
I know Unbearable is a modern classic, and it's keeping my interest, but I just find it depressing. Good thing it has a lot of sex in it. But even the sex is kind of depressing.
I'm sympathetic to Unbearable's whole anti-totalitarian thrust. And the writing is beautiful. But his characters seem so driven by chance and whim, making horrible decisions without giving adequate weight to the alternative futures they face.
Futures turn fearful and dim
When life is steered by whim.
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