In several senses this volume seems quite different from the previous ones; It is translated by a different person, Proust's character seems to have grown up in age and attitude, and more sober matters take the focus of the narration. Less than half way through we pass through a Kafkaesque episode in a shady hotel, and while much of this volume is darker, in a more melancholy and even morbid sense, this bit stood out in being sinister, which none of the rest of the work was. The second half is spent in a party at the Guermantes, and it is here that Proust does much of his thinking upon aging and death.
Despite reviews I have read that claim the translator of the final volume does not do as good a job as Moncrieff does on all the other ones, I found this volume refreshing in its different tone, though after half way through I ceased to notice any of the differences in style between the two that were apparent to begin with.
Why this book is called time regained escaped me until very near the end, as most of this volume is about the way time has fled Proust, who realises he has become old. Much of the book consists of his lamentations of departed youth; a more relevant title that suggested itself to me would simply be “Temps Disparu”, Time Disappeared, as his search for lost time throughout the book has ended in the lost time not in a reality being found, with the revelation that he has little time left. But, in some senses, he does find his lost time, in one way in his observation that time repeats itself, that situations occur again, are never annihilated for good, and in a second sense, that he finally manages to pin down his lost time by recording it all in his novel, which ends at the point that he begins to write it.
I was beginning to suspect, at some point nearing the end of the novel, that I would be disappointed with its conclusion, but after spending no time reflecting upon it, having only just finished it, it is quite clear that the ending is fitting to the work, and that it makes worth while the reading of the whole. ( )

a film with deneuve, beart and malkovich. charming pastiche with scenes juxtaposed between generations. stunning costumes and interiors. No substitute for the french prose.

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1077932.ht...

Well, I've done it: finished the final volume of the Penguin set of À la recherche du temps perdu, a year and a half after starting them. Like the previous one, I found the last volume very lucid and involving; I wonder if this is really the case, or just reflects my increasing comfort level with Proust's prose? It's quite a break with the previous volumes in some ways, chronicling the effects of the 1914-18 war on France, on Paris, on the places the narrator loves and on his social circle; then an accidental encounter with a gay brothel; then a fifty-page reflection on memory while the narrator walks upstairs from the courtyard to the Guermantes' party; then further meditations on age, on death, on what has happened in the previous volumes and on what drives the narrator to write it all down and turn it into a book. It is very satisfying, and now I want to go back and read it all again (though I may read the Alain de Botton book first).

Bechdel test: as hinted previously, I am inclined to give this volume (like others in the series) a passing grade. Even though it is told entirely from the male narrator's point of view, there are numerous coversations between women characters reported, observed or imagined; and in this volume they talk about death and each other at least as much as about men. (He doesn't know what the Duchess is discussing with Rachel when he sees them talking on page 300, but from the context it is probably poetry despite their mutual links with Robert de Saint-Loup.) Given the admitted influence of Proust on Alison Bechdel, it is just as well that he passes her test. I imagine she would be prepared to stretch a point for him if necessary. ( )