Poor Folk - Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky

This is one of the Dostoyevsky's that I had been partially itching to read for quite some time now. I finally thought it was time to get back to another Dostoyevsky and hence the book.

"Poor Folk" was the first novel that got Dostoyevsky a decent amount of fame as a writer and represents a side of him before the death sentence episode that scarred his life. It represents a comparatively less mature style than one encounters in his later works, for obvious reasons. The book talks about, as is apparent from the title, poor denizens of St. Petersburg and their thoughts regarding themselves and others. It is very interestingly presented as a chain of letters between two main characters and nothing else. It starts abruptly and ends with the same abruptness.

The two main characters of the story are Makar Alexievitch Dievushkin and Barabara Alexievna Dobroselova, a copier in his later middle ages and a young woman still to see her prime. The are distantly related and closely situated in their lodgings and affections towards each other. Both being poor, seek solace in the other. They share their lives with each other and an occasional book. Makar Dievushkin showers gifts upon Barbara to his best capacity and she returns his gift with her affections as well as monetary help on a couple of occasions. In the background are the lives of the few people that these two associate with, mostly of the same class as theirs. Towards the end there occur a tumult of gay and saddening occasions.

This was a comparatively less gripping Dostoyevsky than the others but it was still a Dostoyevsky. My interest lies more in the author now than his work. The concept of the story was interesting though there were occasions where the author might have been inconsistent. But all is forgotten and forgiven since he is Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky!

The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera

I had never heard of Milan Kundera. The ramblings of a friend as to how she was unable to understand the movie "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" led me to google the fascinating title. What I hit upon was the book by Kundera. It seemed acclaimed and the title was, as I have mentioned, fascinating, so I ordered it, received it, shelved it and picked it up a couple of weeks back.

The teaser on the back cover says that Kundera talks about "irreconcilable love and infidelities". In my opinion this summary limits the breadth of what Kundera is talking about in this novel but it gives us a taste of the more alluring topics that he covers. "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" is also a misleading title to the book since this phenomenon is the experience of just one of the four main characters that make the story. The book mainly expounds on various philosophies regarding preferences and differences. It's about individuality and the need to see consistency, the need to find the second half of your hermaphrodite self. Kundera pours forth a profusion of ideas, each of which is inane, each incomplete and each real. Somewhere he strikes a cord with his reader. The four characters that he uses as his tools for the task are at times inconsistent but the reader is able to relate to them as parts of himself in some capacity or the other. This book truly deserves to be more popular than it already is.

The exact plot of the story would be difficult to outline in a short space primarily because of the diversity it explores. The story has four protagonists : Tomas, Tereza, Sabina and Franz in decreasing order of amount of text devoted to their characters. Each has his own peculiarities and his own preferences. Tomas is a womanising surgeon who does not believe in the oneness of sexual intercourse and love. Tereza is a woman in search of her individuality and someone who provides her with it. Sabina is a painter who is obsessed with betrayal. Franz is a professor who romanticises about being in a grand march and the approval of the woman he loves. There is the background theme of Russian invasion of Czech and the anti-Communist feelings of the population; the persecution of the intelligentia and their revolt in the face of a apathetic regime.

Kundera's charm lies in the way he has managed to intertwine the love lives of the protagonists with a political satire. His style of writing is enchanting and engrossing. The book is modelled so crisply that you never feel anything drag for too long. Kundera also overcomes the unintentional boredom that is typical of philosophical books. In all, this was a very good read. Probably I will pick another one of his some time.