This is the second installment in the Proust's massive "Remembrance of the things past". I read the first part years ago, in Slovene, and I loved it. I tried to get the remaining parts in Slovene, but it is impossible, I only managed to get the third one, in a used bookstore. So, I read the second part in an English translation and will carry on with the third one in Slovene - it should be fun to compare how do books read like when one switches the language half-way through.
The second book is composed of two parts: in the first part the subject is in Paris, still in love with Swan's daughter Gilberte and in the second one, he finds himself in Balbec on some sort of summer trip to the seaside to relieve his nervous issues and jumps from one flower to the other. The way Proust writes is still quite fascinating; there is no real storyline per se, all there is is continous reflections of the reality in the mind of the protagonist and how these reflections change as the time passes. These books really are about our rather fragmentary understanding of ourselves at any point in time, understanding which is made worse by the fact that we constantly change.
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