Laughable Loves [Paperback]

Milan Kundera (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Penguin; First Edition. first us pb edition (1975)
• ASIN: B004XWUVHI
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Milan Kundera, born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, was a student when the Czech Communist regime was established in 1948, and later worked as a labourer, jazz musician and professor at the Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies in Prague. After the Russian invasion in August 1968, his books were proscribed. In 1975, he and his wife settled in France, and in 1981, he became a French citizen. He is the author of the novels The Joke, Life is Elsewhere, Farewell Waltz, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Immortality, and of the short-story collection Laughable Loves - all originally in Czech. His most recent novels, Slowness, Identity and Ignorance, as well as his non-fiction works The Art of the Novel and Testaments Betrayed, were originally written in French.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engulfing tale of human passions, August 28, 1999

By 

Elena Chavez - See all my reviews

This review is from: Laughable Loves (Paperback)

I can not stop wondering how Milan Kundera takes penetrating glimpses at love's triumphs and tragedies that we so often pass by without any acknowledgement. In the love stories of ordinary people he brings up the desperate longing for closeness and warmth of having a partner by one's side; a partner in love or friendship to find a shelter from everything else. The eroticism of the book is not just a sexual instinct of a male. It envelopes the reader in a sad and sweet embrace of the mundane events drenched with it; the events that we fail to recognize as turning points of our lives. Milan Kundera seems to be saying every time, "Look around! You do not have to watch movies to experince strong passions because they are around you every single minute."

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a playful and ironic read, July 10, 2002

By 

EJR (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Laughable Loves (Paperback)

Kundera puts some of his favorite themes to work in a playful way, as suggested by the title. Throughout the seven short stories in Laughable Loves Kundera highlights the role that mutual misunderstandings play in the creation of seemingly profound, heroic, self-congratulatory experiences, especially where love is concerned. Several tales are heavily ironic: wonderful contradictions emerge when people who cannot take themselves seriously try desperately hard to do so in order to please the straightfaced world in which they find themselves stuck. Similarly, the plasticity of personality, the wispy, fleeting character of existence and the partnership between sadism and sexual desire permeate his plots. Kundera blurs the distinction between charade and authenticity creating the suspicion that human identities may be centerless webs of charades - yet this lack of depth need not be bleak or tragic: it can be liberating and beautiful.

These stories are a joy to read if you're in the mood for ambiguous endings and ironic humor. Although they lack the gravity of his full-length novels I think the short stories in Laughable Loves succeed: irony, not sublimity, is the goal. I gave it four stars because it didn't grip me the way some of Kundera's stuff has in the past while at the same time it was certainly fun (and often psychologically insightful) reading.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant insight into the male mindset in times of love, August 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Laughable Loves (Paperback)

This is a collection of short stories about love particularly from the male perspective. Each looks at contrasting different aspects of love with unnerving verisimilitude. Kundera's observation of human behaviour is startingly accurate as he deftly unravels the male psyche; the female characters are no more idly portrayed either. The prose is lucid, elegant and concise, as is the situational complicity of each plot. This book shows how men are consumed by, and can be crippled by love (in a way that many women think impossible) and how this can tenuously result in them acting as they do - often as irreverent, cold-hearted bastards. Women, read this to understand your hubby/men in general; men, read this to know that you are not alone.