Identity

Identity opens in a small hotel by the sea in Normandy where Chantal, a middle-aged advertising executive, is waiting for her lover to arrive. Jean-Marc is four years younger than she and something of a loner. When her five-year-old son died, Chantal divorced her husband, left her teaching job, and bought an apartment with the money she now earned working in an advertising agency. Jean-Marc, her lover, lives with her in Paris.aWhen Chantal and Jean-Marc return home, Chantal begins to receive letters from a mysterious admirer, signed with his initials C.D.B. He is dazzled by her beauty and follows her with the eyes of a spy and a lover. Who could this man be? Chantal suspects first one man, then another: each proves to be a false lead. Meanwhile, the letters, which Chantal hides from Jean-Marc, begin to have an effect on the couple's sex life, and then, on their love life.Identity recounts a nightmare of loss in the mode of a thriller. Chantal and Jean-Marc lose each other gradually; irritation with the other turns to anger, disgust to repulsion. When they cease to see each other through a lover's eyes, they appear to each other by turns old, ugly, ridiculous, unappealing and unworthy of trust. When Chantal dismisses Jean-Marc and departs for London, city of seduction and orgy in her imagination, the lovers lose not only each other but their very sense of self.aKundera's love story is realistic rather than romantic, candidly physical, disturbing and provocative in its wisdom about love, friendship, family, and women's bodies. The erotic charge between Chantal and Jean-Marc is utterly seductive, but it is the mystery of love that holds center stage inIdentity, Kundera's unexpected love poem to a woman.