It has become one of my rituals to reread this book every five years, without ever intending to. It just turned out that way. The only variable is that I have grown older, yet it almost feels like I am reading a different book. When I first read it in my early twenties, I couldn’t understand Tomas. His detachment felt irresponsible, almost cruel. As I reread the novel over the years, I developed a tolerance for discomfort. I began to see pieces of each character within myself like Tomas’s solitude, Tereza’s longing for weight, Sabina’s instinct to betray anything that threatens to solidify into certainty. (Sabina has always been my favorite.) The novel becomes less about judging them and more about confronting the contradictions I carry contradictions I sometimes want to avoid.
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