From the Bookshelf of The Year of Reading Proust…

Within a Budding Grove (In Search of Lost Time, #2)

Marcel Proust,

C.K. Scott Moncrieff (Translator)

Start date: February 25, 2013

Finish date: April 28, 2013

Discussion: Within a Budding Grove, vol. 2

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Within a Budding Grove, vol. 2

Second book: difficulty staying interested
By Angnus · 8 posts · 83 views

last updated Jun 23, 2020 06:00PM

Through Sunday, 28 Apr.: Within a Budding Grove
By Kris · 66 posts · 182 views

last updated Jan 10, 2016 06:53AM

What Members Thought

Oct 27, 2012 Leo Robertson rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewtastic, proust-out-ma-nut

This is an excellent explanation of why I didn't like this volume. And I tried. And I'm never interested in the growing up parts that every (semi)-autobiography for some reason needs to start with. Where did it all begin? Not always at the beginning.

It's very difficult to isolate a particular book and explain its good and bad parts without comparison, so I'll do it: I thought Swann's Way was much better. Quite possibly because it is a first exposure to Proust's writing style, but also because I ...more

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Mar 16, 2013 Shelley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fic-realism, favourites, geo-europe-france

Volume 2 of ISOLT spans the adolescence of M.. Just as adolescence functions as the watershed between childhood and early adulthood, so Volume 2 is the watershed between the two côté of the Swanns and the Guermantes.

The first part, "Madame Swann at Home", centers itself on the family that M. knows from his childhood, his obsession for Gilberte a mirror of Swann's passion for Odette. His gaze is still directed inwards. In the second part concerning Balbec, we see M. growing up, almost imperceptib Volume 2 of ISOLT spans the adolescence of M.. Just as adolescence functions as the watershed between childhood and early adulthood, so Volume 2 is the watershed between the two côté of the Swanns and the Guermantes.

The first part, "Madame Swann at Home", centers itself on the family that M. knows from his childhood, his obsession for Gilberte a mirror of Swann's passion for Odette. His gaze is still directed inwards. In the second part concerning Balbec, we see M. growing up, almost imperceptibly but surely. His gaze turns firmly outwards.

We are introduced to new characters "of the society", including Saint-Loup and M. de Charlus, and the mysteries of their behaviours. The image of the Albertine Simonet and her posse, as crass, vigorous, and middle-class as Nabokov's nymphets, impinges rudely on the world of Mme Villesparisis. But more impressively, almost disconcertingly, we are suddenly confronted with the historicity of the era. Consider, for instance, the image of the Grand Hotel as "an immense and wonderful aquarium against whose glass wall the working population of Balbec... pressed their faces to watch the luxurious life of its occupants gently floating upon the golden eddies within". The glass wall certainly does not protect the occupants: pages later, a restaurant full of the same aristocratic crew is likened to "a giant fish-tank of bow-net in which a fisherman has collected all his glittering catch". The accompanying soundtrack--the quintet of Franck or the waltzes of Lehar--is almost identical to that of The Radetzsky March --written around the same time. Although it is a recounting of the adolescent M.'s experiences, the perspective is almost certainly that of the mature M. who has full knowledge of the Great War.

Against this backdrop, M.'s budding love for Albertine is almost a gentle comedy of manners. The scene in which Elstir gives his famous speech "[W]e must not repudiate [the follies of our youth]" to M.--while M. is busily plotting to secure an introduction from Elstir to the girls without having the appearance of doing so--is one of the funniest I've ever read. ...more

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Mar 10, 2013 Charles Finch rated it it was amazing

I'm not sure how to even review this book. Maybe I'll review them all in aggregate if I finish. If you're considering reading them, do it, don't wait, just do it now. ...more

1 like · Like · see review