Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is a review by an amateur reader for amateur literati. I'm 71. I am not taking a college literature class (although I am college educated and have an M. D. degree, if that means anything); I'm not a professor, and I don't hang out in book clubs. Lately, after years of laziness and negligence, I've at last read about 50 "important" books to catch up on what I have missed, and, notably for me, at last, after fear of commitment, have recently finished Proust's magnum opus to see what the fuss was all about. I read it straight through over a 9 month period, in parcels of minutes to hours, usually in the quiet time before retiring. In an effort to give my straight unbiased comments I have not read any the reviews here. The Modern Library 6 book cased edition by translators Moncrieff, Kilmartin, and Enright, turned out to be more than good; it was a delightful, easy style, not obscure or convoluted; you readily could appreciate Proust's incredibly detailed yet smooth, almost poetic style, with his superb attention to psychological detail in how one thinks, feels and reacts to events and memory. I will not go much into the plot or the literary stature of the book as I am sure it has all been covered elsewhere quite capably. I will say the main theme is the close critical observation of the social life of the era, the pretensions of the very rich and the competing social climbers, and more significantly, the conveying of one's life to such an extent that it almost takes over your own; you may well be lured into taking one reality for the other. Did I get everything out of the book I could have? No. Why? Well, when you start, you don't know what is significant, which characters are going to be important later on, what is the importance of a certain view, a particular impression, a flower, a scene, a smell, a remembrance which will later be elaborated on by another remembrance. There are supposedly about 2000 characters, and the 3500 pages, or so. The characters may have strange names or similar names (Villeparisis, Verdurin, Vinteuil); they may change their names (Mme Guermantes aka Oriane then v Princess Guermantes now as taken over by Mme Verdurin). M. Guermantes is Basin. Charlus is Meme, and Palamede. If you have trouble with remembering names this tangled multi-personed story may not be for you. When you get into the later volumes will you remember everything that went on in the earlier volumes? Will you remember all the names? Checking the synopsis and the alphabetical listing of characters and persons and places and themes in the Modern Library indices will help you along; but these sometimes are not too clarifying -- they mostly list the bare events and brief definitions, not analysis in depth. For adjunctive help I suggest two books *about* the book, unless you just want to read it raw --a sensible procedure since, after all, a renowned author should be able to write clearly, better than anyone else. If otherwise, first I recommend a tiny well-illustrated booklet, "Marcel Proust" by Mary Ann Caws, 2005, a short biography with dozens of photos, color illustrations, thumbnails of paintings and a few snippets of music scores; this is a fetching companion which puts a little meat on the bones of the novel. For example, you get to see the famous Vermeer with the "little patch of yellow wall." There are photos of many of the characters in Proust's world: Colette; Sarah Berhardt, Count Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac (I love that tongue twister. Curious?) The second helper is "Marcel Proust's Search for Lost Time - A Reader's Guide to The Remembrance of Things Past" by Patrick Alexander a 385 paperback that gives an extended summary (beyond what's in the backs of the novel itself) and a guide to the main characters, plus good references and bits about Paris, France and the author's life. Take a deep breath and plunge into it unaided and see how it fits together at the end, when everyone is old and the story gels. If you followed everything, great! If there is a struggle, try the assistants. If you are puzzled, you get to read it again!