Perfect

Brilliant narration

This is my first ' read' this far into Proust and I loved the story and the poetry of some the passages is so beautifully musical that I will be returning to listen again like one wood to a symphony, after I have finished volume six!

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Humour and Psychology

I can’t get enough of Proust, and thanks to this monumental feat of audio recording, I don’t have to. What makes him so wonderful is his wonderful sense of humour and acute sense for human psychology. Not psychology in some sort of distant, academic sense, but pragmatic, observational and projective, where he not only sees things around him and is able to analyze through them the human condition, but also the marvellous clear-sightedness where he’s able to write about “himself” (inasmuch as we want to see the narrator as the author, something this work effortlessly embraces) as the object of critique. His irony, sometimes near-impenetrable, encloses whole conversations, that only afterwards one realizes have been written down in jest.

The second part in the series, “Within a Budding Grove”, (again, this is Moncrieff’s title, the correct translation of the French “À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs” rather being “In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower” – as a sidenote, it’s good to know since the theme is played upon in the book) is slightly more difficult to appreciate than the sublime first volume, “Swann’s Way”.

I say “more difficult to appreciate”, which one may interpret as a coward’s way of saying “bad”, simply because while it’s a brilliant work, Proustian all the way through, it’s a step down from the wonders of the first volume, and for that matter, from the following volume. The first part, “Around Mrs Swann” ("Autour de Mme Swann"), is wonderful, but I can’t relate much to the Balbec episode, that is, "Place Names: The Place" ("Noms de pays: Le pays"). Perhaps it’s because we already have the archetype of Albertine in Mrs Swann that much of it feels rather rehearsed.

Neville Jason continues to amaze. Someone somewhere (vague enough for you?) described Jason’s ability to make Proust’s often quite complex sentences clear with his articulation and pace. He’s such a joy to listen to, and I’m completely sold on the prospect of listening to his “War and Peace” whenever I finish “Time Regained”.

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Excellent narration, in spite of MISSING 20 PAGES

Excellent narration. Proust's long sentences make perfect sense! Good range of voices. However, inexplicable gap in narration. 22 pages (in my edition) missing after Audible's chap 105

I posted this review some time ago. The missing pages have suddenly appeared causing all subsequent chapters to be renumbered!

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Essentially the boring lives of the idle rich.

Much has been written in praise of Proust but this is the other side.
It is essentially the boring lives of the bone idle rich in early 20C France. A more pretentious collection of snobs I have never come across in any book. I am now on to vol. 5 & this applies to all I have listened to although to be fair it does improve in vol. 4 & 5. Is it worth the time ? You may think so. I am only continuing because of lockdown & I have 16 large loads of manure to move by shovel.
I feel these books are past their sell by date & belong to another era thankfully past. It is a pity the French revolutions failed to stop the rise of such a society portrayed here.

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Themes include anti-Semitism and near-pedophilia

I loved the first book in this series, and parts of this one, but was disappointed to find it liberally peppered with anti-Semitism, and ending with an infatuation with girls who had yet to complete puberty (whom he liked most for that reason), and an unwillingness to believe one of those girls did not consent to him kissing her in bed. For all he regularly writes of propriety, the author did not understand consent.

The narrator was superb.

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Difficult book to recommend

I think this would be impossible to recommend to anybody who is not interested in philosophy or French history or culture, or reading books simply because they are regarded as classics. The unusual writing style might be of interest to aspiring authors, or those studying literature, but that's about it. It's a very difficult book to recommend on it's own merits.

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