A review by nick_jenkins
How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton

3.0

Like scripture, Proust comes most alive in excerpts and glosses. De Botton doesn't actually quote that much from the novel (and his disregard for even the most minimal citation apparatus is maddening), and his book is nugatory as an interpretive guide to it, but it nonetheless succeeds in isolating some truly excellent passages from the novel and from Proust's correspondence and turning them into supple 'insights' or lessons. Most of them are inane, but also unnoticed, or seldom noticed. Which is why, I think most people read Proust in the first place.