Marcel Proust's Letters

 

I picked this up a year ago, maybe two, because I stumbled upon it in (where else?) BookXcess and I thought everyone's always going on about Marcel Proust and surely he writes splendid letters.

I guess they were. But the editor is obviously a Proust fanatic (the way I'm a Virginia Woolf fanatic) and milks these letters to get an idea of the time, and the gossip and see how what he mentions in passing relates to his great novel.

I found it difficult to read his great novel.

Not because of the flow of language and his absurdly spectacular sentences, but because I found the protagonist, the one with the memories of madeleines, so unendearing.

The book had one virtue, for me at least. It was very, very short.

Only pick this up if you're a fan.

Otherwise, never mind.