Identity (novel)

The novel follows an intimate relationship between a woman Chantal and Jean-Marc, alternating perspectives with each chapter. It begins with Chantal at a hotel on the coast of Normandy awaiting the arrival the next day of her partner. When he arrives they struggle to find each other, misattributing their loved one's identity to stranger on the beach who upon closer examination bears little resemblance. Upon their meeting, Chantal is upset by her disturbing slightly sexual dream as well as the way a man looked at her in a cafe.

She also has many musings about fathers and observes children on the beach. This is a reoccurring theme within the novel and references her anxieties about the death of her child with a previous partner. She feels this period of her life was her prime, allowing a sense of unease and decline to shape her sense of self throughout the novel.

Jean-Marc asks why she is upset and she responds that "men don't turn to look at me anymore."[2] This remark serves as the crucial instant of the novel. It reveals a self identity of Chantal that alienates Jean-Marc's perception of his lover and thus himself.

Chantal later begins receiving love letters that are a rude intrusion into her relationship and force her to think of how she appears to others. It creates in her a changed behaviour motivated by a feeling that someone is constantly observing her. She hides the letters in her underwear draw and does not tell Jean-Marc.

As the letters continue and the couple show close intimacy but also a weary underlying anxiety about the other's identity, Chantal's acute observations of a moved shawl in her bedroom and specific details from the letters lead her to the conclusion that Jean-Marc is the secret correspondent.

From Jean-Marc's perspective, he reveals in third person narration that his first letter sought only to relieve Chantal of the feeling that men no longer turned to look at her. Yet her refusal to tell him about the letters and her changed behaviour and more sensual dressing saw Jean-Marc become jealous. She acts differently and he perceives her as a different person in a range of contexts, this multiplicity of perceived identities challenges Jean-Marc's singular perception of his lover's identity. He feels he has transformed "a beloved woman into the simulacrum of a beloved woman."[2] This challenges his own sense of identity turning him into a simulacrum as well.

After confirming with a graphologist that the letters were written by Jean-Marc in a different style, she confronts him when he was just about to admit the ruse. An implication of this confrontation is that Jean-Marc, who lives in Chantal's apartment, feels closer to his fears of becoming a beggar.

The final section of the novel reveals the disorientation of each characters' sense of identity is initiated by a confusion of the other's identity.

Due to the relative obscurity of this novel in Kundera's oeuvre, the critical receptions are limited to reviews at the time of the publication, 1998. The general response to the novel seeks to compare it to Kundera's more famous novels, specifically The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Due to Identity's very different stylistic choices and linear narrative, the book is very different to these earlier successes, challenging what readers expected from a Kundera novel.[6] Newspaper reviewers with a general or non academic audience referenced the book's lack of character development and minimal characters and plot overall.[7][8] Reviewers from the New York Times[9] and The Guardian[5] looked more favourably at the simple narrative and complex philosophical questions, these reviewers also looked at the narrative form as an intentional way of reflecting the confusion of the plot.