C'est y est on est dedans... plus rien ne pourra nous arrêter... On sait qu'on ira jusqu'au bout ( )

A bit easier and quicker to read than the real thing. Not quite as good, however.

In Volume II Mr. Swann takes the role as a minor character. He is now married to Odette and she is the center of her own social circle throwing lavish tea parties and commanding her own clique of friends to visit her salon regularly and attend her social outings. Mr. Swann must now endure the struggle of the class war; Odette is not accepted in his upper class society, and he has no desire to lower himself to her "bourgeois mediocrity".

The narrator, now a young man, is tormented by his love for young, beautiful, spoiled, Gilberte Swann. He is sensitive. He is romantic. He is madly in love. But, he is also practical. "There can be no peace of mind in love, since what one has obtained is never anything but a new starting-point for further desires." When Gilberte does not share his feelings of ardor, he comes to the conclusion that the only way to break the "habit of love" is to change environment. So he agrees to go away with his grandmother for the summer. The remainder of the story takes place at the beach resort of Balbec where we get to view through the narrator's perceptive eyes, French society at leisure. We feel his anxiety and fear of being in strange surroundings outside his comfort zone; his loneliness, his shyness. We share the joy of his developing friendship with Robert de Saint-Loup. And we experience his reverence in sighting a group of beautiful young girls frolicking on the beach, and his awe of befriending those lovely creatures and becoming a part of the group.

As in Swann's Way, the narrative is told with heart-felt emotion and microscopic focus on the minutest details that only Proust can deliver; meandering sentences, drifting, gliding, floating, presenting a kaleidoscope of thoughts, visions, feelings, and ideas. I loved it! Marcel Proust was a genius. ( )

fascinated by the beauty spot which i didn't notice until i really looked for it and then of course i saw it all the time. i've never even tried to read proust. i would like to try the others. ( )

New translation by James Grieve, the novel describes a young man and his first discovery of love albeit love tainted with possession. Scenes of the Normandy coast, belle epoch resorts and those who frequent them, the narrator begins his ascent into the upper reaches of French society. ( )