dukegregory 's review for:

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

4.0

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More like a 4.5, but alas some of Swann in Love was boring as hell to me so that's just something that requires a minor demotion. I'm so excited for the next volume. Such a stunning examination of the ephemerality of memory and place, and a very strange, tortured take on love, love that seems to be so filled with vanity and egotism, a masochistic clamoring to be depended on that it's warped beyond traditional repair. All of Combray is stunning. Impressionistic descriptions, art references galore that never implicate pretension, it's all here.