This one took forever!!!

3.5*
While Proust's style will never be a favorite of mine (what with the extremely long sentences & long digressions), I do find that the further I get in the series, the more interesting I find the books even though (or perhaps because of) Marcel, the narrator, is getting increasingly disturbing in his behaviour. ( )

My earlier dislike for the narrator that began in the previous volume has expanded into despise, thanks to his obnoxious jealousy over Albertine with whom I'm relating far more at this stage. It made this volume difficult to read with the same detached pleasure because I kept waiting for her too to become frustrated with the narrator's ridiculous behaviour. The irrational jealously is especially maddening to read when placed alongside his confession that he no longer loves her. Why, in that case, has he taken her captive? As an object, and for the occasional callback to his first impression of her when he desired her mystery - before he wanted that mystery to be expelled, as part of possessing her. He has wrought the destruction of their love through this bottled up madness, ultimately to both their miseries.

Jealousy is really just the start of it, because the narrator is also extremely possessive and paranoid. He's become certain that Albertine is leading a double life - the one she portrays for his sake, and the other one where her 'true' passions lie. It becomes impossible to know which character to believe. He does seem to catch her in quite a few lies - or is she just that forgetful? She does seem to have an eye for the ladies - or is it just the regular variety of friendships, envies and judgements? It's very hard to guess with only the narrator's (slightly unhinged) perspective as a guide. What is clear either way is that he is transparently controlling, disrupting her plans at every turn for the slim chance that it interferes with some imagined plot she may be hatching. And at the same time, where is his eye wandering? What outrageous lies is he telling? The hypocrosy ... unlike Proust, I have no words. The ending of this volume is extremely satisfying to me and raises the hope I may still enjoy the last two.

This is the first volume to have been published after Marcel Proust's death. What he appears to have done was complete the entire sequence, then was fleshing out each volume before its publication. The last three did not fully receive all the attention he would have intended, or as Wikipedia puts it, "the last three of the seven volumes contain oversights and fragmentary or unpolished passages, as they existed only in draft form at the death of the author; the publication of these parts was overseen by his brother Robert.". In this fifth volume the style is not noticeably different, and is as likely as ever to veer away from the action into prolonged pages of descriptive digression. That said, I did get a taste of the oddities. They include this utterly bizarre line: "Then she would find her tongue and say 'My -' or 'My darling -', followed by my Christian name, which, if we give the narrator the same name as the author of this book, would be 'My Marcel' or 'My darling Marcel.'" That isn't simply breaking the fourth wall, that's the (always unnamed) narrator expressing direct awareness that he is a figment of the author's imagination. After this scene, Albertine address the narrator as Marcel now and then, and it's jarring every time. That's the worst of it, if you don't count the premature death of Mme de Villeparisis who apparently turns up alive in the sixth volume. Only one other peculiarity really stuck out at me, when Marcel dedicates a short paragraph in what sounds like his own voice to the man who inspired the character of Charles Swann.

Among the tricks of memory that Proust explores this time, the standout for me is how items that I remember seeing in one setting, transposed to another, bring memories and impressions of that other place to infect the new one. Conversely, a setting emptied of its customary belongings will tarnish those associated memories. It's why I've never again set foot in my grandparents' former home since my uncle remodeled it. There is also another element that may come into play when Proust finds his ending in the last volume: this growing sense the narrator has of the profundity of artistic heights that gives them a grace larger than life (more real than the false heights he's anticipated before), when a few key notes of a sonata triggers the same taste of happiness he has enjoyed at key moments of reflection over tea or while strolling the Champs-Elysees. A link appears between memory and happiness triggered by art, and I suspect this will feed into the narrator's own artistic attempts. ( )

While Proust's style will never be a favorite of mine (what with the extremely long sentences & long digressions), I do find that the further I get in the series, the more interesting I find the books. ( )

I still don't like Proust…! ( )