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A review by david_rhee
The Captive by Marcel Proust
4.0
I was finally able to pick up the 5th volume of Remembrance of Things Past almost 2 years after finishing Sodom and Gomorrah. Even after that long layoff things just seemed to pick up where they left off which I feel is a testament to Proust's masterful literary flow. Marcel continues to torture himself by imagining that his love Albertine is unfaithful to him. This consuming jealousy dominated Sodom and Gomorrah, so its transition is seamless. He resolves to hold her captive in his home to keep an eye on her, but ironically it is he who really becomes the prisoner. His obsessive efforts to keep Albertine bound in turn entwine around himself and rob him of peace of mind and freedom.
There's no use continuing a synopsis of the book, so I'll focus on Proust's strengths the most notable of which is his description of involuntary sensations. His reflections on memory, subjective beauty, and desire are a treat. All of this is expressed in a flowing prose that carries the reader along in its current. Reading Proust is not a labor, and one needs to save his energy to digest the complicated web of relations which span this giant novel. His keen sense for the manifold nonverbal communications which accompany people's interactions can get overwhelming. I would think a common mistake in reading Proust is to become overly concerned with the event sequence, ie. "what is happening?" It's best to let the sequence fall into place or backtrack with a synopsis later.
There's no use continuing a synopsis of the book, so I'll focus on Proust's strengths the most notable of which is his description of involuntary sensations. His reflections on memory, subjective beauty, and desire are a treat. All of this is expressed in a flowing prose that carries the reader along in its current. Reading Proust is not a labor, and one needs to save his energy to digest the complicated web of relations which span this giant novel. His keen sense for the manifold nonverbal communications which accompany people's interactions can get overwhelming. I would think a common mistake in reading Proust is to become overly concerned with the event sequence, ie. "what is happening?" It's best to let the sequence fall into place or backtrack with a synopsis later.