What I love in Milan Kundera (a writer I've finally and successfully managed to read after having cancelled and abandoned reading at least a hundred writers) is his talent for opening windows that consequently open other windows (a bit like Chinese boxes) without closing the former windows he leaves open behind.
He starts with one story, then a window opens and you glance at another story, until that window opens another story without closing the previous one. And so on...
A masterful example of this technique, even if not perfectly successful, is "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting", while a less masterful but perfectly successful example is "Ignorance".
Too many windows, too many characters and too many situations in the first book, and the rather boring Tamina character, who occupies a large part of the book and slows down the pace. Unbearable for me is the story of Tamina on the island with the kids who live there.
More calibrated and well-balanced the second book. A story basically focussed on only two main characters, Josef and Irena, and more control in opening windows.
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