I'm halfway through the last volume of Proust's In Search of Lost Time, and I admit I'm proud of it. I don't know what can be said in a small space about a novel so large and canonical, but I've deeply enjoyed it. An unexpected quirk of the novel is that though I've been heavily absorbed in it the whole way, and found it moving, funny, and in general a complete literary experience, I can't really recommend it to others without absurd sounding qualifiers, e.g., "As long as you can put up with hundreds of pages on end of detailed descriptions of things like churches, landscapes, flowers, parties, dinners, families, manners, morals, and the like, you'll find it immeasurably beautiful and immediately personally meaningful!" --where I'd of course have never previously taken that bait.
One summer in high school I decided to read In Search of Lost Time before school started up again.
I only made my way through Swann's Way (the first of seven books in the series), but I'm so glad I did. I think it was probably the toughest piece of literature I'd ever read, but one of the most rewarding by far.
I know exactly what you mean. The Combray part was hard to dig into, but full of enough psychological insight to make me want to continue. Then the long, brutal debasement of Swann, such an inspiring character, was intensely painful, sometimes enough to make me squirm in my seat, but with a conclusion so unexpected, peculiar, and profound, I was hooked.
I hoped my French would be up to Proust, but sadly it wasn't, and I didn't want re-learning French to be an impediment to the enjoyment of the story. So I've read the Enright versions.
Ok. I know no French at all (il y a un poisson dans votre bibliotheque) but that novel is something I've been interested in trying. Maybe I'll give that a shot.
