As the first book of a much larger work, Swann’s Way certainly feels like a prelude, a necessary background perhaps, but that doesn’t take away from its individual beauty. 

Very much a stream of consciousness book, I really appreciated getting lost in the never ending sentences and the strange jumps between one thought and the next. Firstly, we’re introduced to the narrator as he reminisces about his childhood, barely understanding what the adults around him are talking about, and culminating with his first glance at Gilberte. The final part reconnects to this era too, with the narrator and Gilberte now being playground mates. But the real meat of this novel is the central part, a digression into the life and psyche of Gilberte’s dad, Mr Swann.

It’s interesting how when the story for all intents and purposes switches to a third person narration, it loses none of its deep introspection and exploration of the human mind. In particular, we are given a very self-centred and one-sided perspective through Swann’s eyes, in his pursuit of Odette. Now, I totally see why Simone de Beauvoir didn’t like this, but I have a severe weakness for books that unashamedly portray the male perspective. And Swann’s infatuation and then near obsession with Odette is really something to behold. Yes, it is deeply imperfect, and I think the author doesn’t shy away from showing the gender based double standards of his society, even though perhaps he leaves any type of criticism or even irony about it between the lines. But I don’t think he was moralistic about it either. I’m okay with knowing that a man may consider his pride hurt when a woman cheats on him, even though he wasn’t entirely faithful at the beginning, either. I feel privileged to be given insight into that, to witness that all consuming passion. And on the other side, Odette is definitely portrayed as wicked in a way, but I liked how free she is. She’s a weird female character, because she is both the representation of perfection and entirely flawed in the eyes of the men (and women) around her, and that’s the only way we see her due to the perspective we’re offered. But her return, under a different guise, in part 3 suggests that there may be more our narrator was simply not privy to, and puts his reliability in question (after all, he’s only drawing on second hand accounts).

To me, that was the highlight of the book. I know there are a lot of other themes that emerge, just, but I think they’ll be more apparent to me once a read the following volumes of this saga, if you will. I just really enjoyed the writing most of all, like at the end of the day, for as much praise as I wrote before, this as a stand alone story is nothing special or exciting, it kinda reminded of Henry James, rather than say, Edith Wharton. But it’s not a self contained novel, it’s merely an introduction, so that’s the basis I’m judging it on. I would say it’d be silly to stop here if you wanted to read Proust, like I don’t know anything about the rest of in search of lost time other than that not many people attempt to read it, but you can just tell this feels unfinished and writing this review just now I want to see what’s next really badly.