A review by buddhafish
The Fugitive by Marcel Proust

4.0

4.5. This is another placeholder review as I have just finished the combined volumes 5 & 6 by Moncrieff and Kilmartin. Some of the reflections on grief, forgetting and remembering were stunning here. The sojourn in Venice (though it's been a while since I visited the city) felt so real and truthful to my own memory of the place. The middle section of the novel is definitely more character-based, dialogue-heavy, but now these later volumes are returning to the ethereal and dreamlike thoughts of Marcel. We are slowly reentering his inner world. Someone asked me the other day, has Proust changed your life so far? I usually hate that 'this book changed my life' schtick and almost never believe it, but I guess when I close the final page in Paris in a few weeks, I'll know for sure.