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4.06 AVERAGE
4.06 AVERAGE
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I enjoyed this book immensely. If I hadn't had to return it to the library, I would have filled it with annotations. Proust is a writer after my own heart: he loves writing long, convoluted sentences and I love reading them. It is immediately obvious why this is a classic. There were so many moments where I stopped short in amazement that he captured an emotion that I had never been able to articulate so well: the feeling of artistic inspiration before you know what it is, and the subsequent transcendence of literary creation; the heightened but very real-seeming drama of childhood; the emotion inspired by seeing a beautiful scene or hearing a beautiful sequence of music; every stage of being in passionate love, from beginning to end - I was scalped. At the same time, the social absurdities of the time and the various characters were described in an absolutely hilarious way that also seemed to map perfectly onto how people I know act in the modern day. Proust describes the human condition very well, and you know it's well-done because it endures. Very interested to follow Swann's and Odette's story in the following volumes. What on Earth happened between them after all that?
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
My star rating would probably not make sense to a person browsing through my book list. At times it doesn't even make sense to me. I suppose the long and short of is that five stars to me, is a book I could not put down. It is a book that I think about after I finish, over and over, months and years afterwards. It's a book that speaks to my very soul. It's a book I can't get out of my head.
Four stars is a book I liked, very much, but doesn't have that same pull. Three stars is where it gets muddy. It can be a book I found "meh", or a book I'm torn about. It can be something I didn't necessarily enjoy, but still enjoyed. Or it's a book I didn't feel much about but didn't hate. See how difficult this is? So, I call this book three stars for simplicities sake, although I hardly know what I think of it. I'm sure that will undulate with my thoughts.
I feel like I've missed some great thing about this book. All I read in reviews are words of praise. All I hear are giddy raptures of a mind blown. But all I felt was a bit bored and confused at the whole premise. The writing was beautiful, there's no denying. I like flowery writing, if you couldn't tell, but this was just a bit much for me. I can hardly tell you what the premise of the book was because I simply don't understand it, and I don't understand the charm it is supposed to hold.
Perhaps part of the wrong in my reading, if there is wrong, was that I read it at work between calls. The constant interruptions and my distracted mind don't really bode well for such flowery pages. Sentences of that length will obviously lose their strength if I stop halfway through to take a call.
Some description of this book describes the writing as stream-of-consciousness writing, which I found an apt description. It did feel written on a whim. The first half of the book covers almost no time, dwelling painfully long on the authors (or at least it felt autobiographical) insomnia, and the youthful, childish longing for his mother's kiss. It went on, and on, and on until I felt positively mad.
The second half of the book was a bit more interesting story wise, and sad. It followed M. Swann's desperate obsession with Madame de Crecy. Their relationship starts out with him aloof, reserved, and with her desperate for him. As time passes it turns to him unable to leave her, despite hating her. She treats him with disdain, and tramples on him. Both were cruel, in their own ways. It's that sad story of two people who are together and can't understand why.
Part three is back to the writer's obsession with Gilberte, the child of M. Swann and Madame de Crecy, who is now Madame Swann. On and on he twines around the memory of her.
"The places that we have known belong not only to the little world of space on which we map them for our own convenience. None of them was ever more than a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time; remembrance of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas! as the years."
And that is all I can say about that. Three stars it shall remain.
Four stars is a book I liked, very much, but doesn't have that same pull. Three stars is where it gets muddy. It can be a book I found "meh", or a book I'm torn about. It can be something I didn't necessarily enjoy, but still enjoyed. Or it's a book I didn't feel much about but didn't hate. See how difficult this is? So, I call this book three stars for simplicities sake, although I hardly know what I think of it. I'm sure that will undulate with my thoughts.
I feel like I've missed some great thing about this book. All I read in reviews are words of praise. All I hear are giddy raptures of a mind blown. But all I felt was a bit bored and confused at the whole premise. The writing was beautiful, there's no denying. I like flowery writing, if you couldn't tell, but this was just a bit much for me. I can hardly tell you what the premise of the book was because I simply don't understand it, and I don't understand the charm it is supposed to hold.
Perhaps part of the wrong in my reading, if there is wrong, was that I read it at work between calls. The constant interruptions and my distracted mind don't really bode well for such flowery pages. Sentences of that length will obviously lose their strength if I stop halfway through to take a call.
Some description of this book describes the writing as stream-of-consciousness writing, which I found an apt description. It did feel written on a whim. The first half of the book covers almost no time, dwelling painfully long on the authors (or at least it felt autobiographical) insomnia, and the youthful, childish longing for his mother's kiss. It went on, and on, and on until I felt positively mad.
The second half of the book was a bit more interesting story wise, and sad. It followed M. Swann's desperate obsession with Madame de Crecy. Their relationship starts out with him aloof, reserved, and with her desperate for him. As time passes it turns to him unable to leave her, despite hating her. She treats him with disdain, and tramples on him. Both were cruel, in their own ways. It's that sad story of two people who are together and can't understand why.
Part three is back to the writer's obsession with Gilberte, the child of M. Swann and Madame de Crecy, who is now Madame Swann. On and on he twines around the memory of her.
"The places that we have known belong not only to the little world of space on which we map them for our own convenience. None of them was ever more than a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time; remembrance of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas! as the years."
And that is all I can say about that. Three stars it shall remain.
68: «Sempre parlava fluixet perquè creia que tenia alguna peça trencada flotant dins el cap que s'hauria desplaçat si parlava massa fort, però mai s'estava gaire estona, fins i tot sola, sense dir res, ja que es pensava que era saludable per a la seva gola i creia que els ofecs i les angoixes que patia serien menys freqüents si impedia a la sang d'aturar-s'hi»
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Proust’s sumptuous, nostalgic narrative voice is unparalleled, especially in the opening chapter. He slyly inserts a dagger thrust at the close of each chapter, which I found memorable each time it happened, even in “Swann in Love,” a chapter that tended to fatigue me.
When I bought this book, the woman who rung it up for me told me it was ‘seminal’, and I am very much inclined to agree. With Proust, there can be moments where it is difficult to follow his intense and rambling trains of thought. But when you begin to follow along, you cannot help but get carried off in his delightful prose, riding this wonderful wave of place and characters and feeling. This took me five months to finish, partly because of the nature of his writing, but also because - like Jean Genet who, after reading the opening pages of Within a Budding Grove, was so awestruck he endeavoured to read and savour each precious page - I simply did not want to rush the book. Thank you Proust and thank you to my lecturer whose advice for the next book was to read as though ‘all the girls are boys’.