In Search of Lost Time, Vol 2: Within a Budding Grove

I haven't read this yet, but if it is as good as Volume 1 I shall be very satisfied because the translation is excellent, and that is why I have bought it.

Oui oui

Bought as a requested present for my sons growing collection of books, he's very happy as far as i'm aware

The second volume of Proust's In Search of Lost Time, but whereas the first was genius here the mask slips and Proust is revealed as a master essayist and observer whilst the great novel that was Volume One slips away. There is no doubt that Proust can write, and brilliantly so, but this is the book that punctures the idea of Proust the novelist. In Book one, Swann's way, Proust constructed the perfect narrative of a three way love story wrapped around perceptions, self-deceit, half-truths and broken memory. This volume takes the same characters (or at least people with the same name) and subjects them to a series of critical essays in which Proust allows himself to disgorge his prejudices, wit, bile and tenderness. His themes are manifold - technology (the telephone and the train), drawing room conversation and convention, the place of flowers in modern life, hotel etiquette, art, the arts, government and social status - all of these attract his laser beam attention and are expertly and daintily dissected without a trace of a sneer but with all the knowing cunning of a mind that is simply superior. In amongst these epigrams, aphorisms, maxims and reflections there is a plot of sorts as the author grows up sexually through his teenage years doting first on Gilberte and then on Albertine. We assume the writer is Proust himself, although this is never clear, and what a thoroughly ghastly fellow he is - sickly and weedy (when it suits him) so that he can manipulate his parents and grandmother, friends and doctors; sneaky and unscrupulous in maneuvering others to give him what he wants, capricious in his friendship, highly judgemental (if accurate), base in his amorous objectives, unforgiving when slighted, sly. But somehow - no doubt because of his fierce intellectual honesty and curiosity - he attracts people to him and is liked and respected. Where he comes unstuck however is in dealing with the opposite sex. Book one saw him give up Gilberte in favour of the idea of Gilberte. Proust has to undertake some rowing back from this so that his young hero (at first about 12 or 13) can once again meet his boyhood crush, interact and mutually fall in love. But the hero's acerbic attitude to love soon causes a rift and their affair is spoiled and with it the first half of this book. Proust tries to repeat his trick from book one of matching the progress of Swann's love for his mistress - now wife - with Proust's own love for Gilberte - both relationships are nothing but cold ash. This is all fine as far as it goes but the second half of the novel has a whole set of new characters and locations and introduces us to Albertine, the new woman in the narrator's life. Paris is left behind in favour of the seaside resort of Balbec and everything you knew before is thrown away. Every page here is worth reading and there is so much to enjoy and indeed marvel upon. But Proust has had to rework almost entirely the characters of Swann and M. Swann so that they are unrecognisable from book one. His own story with Gilberte is reawakened only to die again and his relationship with Albertine is part of a different thread to that of Swann. In Book one Proust held together his thoughts on modern life with the narrative drive of his story, but here the reader can see the joints, with Proust's various essays being stitched together by the thinnest of plots. It's wonderful, but it's not great literature.

Second reading improves with every page

received on time and enjoy the book

Arrived in immaculate condition, thank you very much!

Proust... being himself and very selfish. Rather fun for the people observations... but he is sooo wrapped up in himself it does make for heavy reading. One gets fed up with his attention seeking, so ... but it is ongoing.. Like War and Peace, Proust does HAVE to have been achieved!