I enjoyed its touches on the magnetic nature of western culture and commodification, and the overall generational disinterest/disillusionment of youth in the political scene. This is contrasted with the aging ruling class controlling them under the guise of knowing what is best, or what the past has held. This is an oversimplification as I do feel her overall tone is almost that communism was bound to lose to the hedonism and corruption of capitalism, rather than the states own failings. With Erpenbeck's privileged background, I don't trust Kairos as accurate historical fiction, or at a minimum, I don't believe it faithfully captures the average citizen experience of the time. Whether that matters is up to you.

There are compelling moments in the middle where they are reapproaching and revisiting their initial landmarks of the relationship and how these places along with time affect our cognitive biases towards people and government and can emotionally "trap" us. But all these ideas are buried in such miserable repetition and retreading that I cannot really say that I liked this overall. The experience of a character being basically psychologically tortured isn't for me, at least when it feels to serve very little payoff.

Kairos won the Booker Prize mid-read, and it makes me wonder if that had something to do with my book club's overall praise of this.