Swann's Way

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In the overture to Swann's Way, the themes of the whole of In Search of Lost Time are introduced, and the narrator's childhood in Paris and Combray is recalled, most memorably in the evocation of the famous maternal good-night kiss. The recollection of the narrator's love for Swann's daughter Gilberte leads to an account of Swann's passion for Odette and the rise of the nouveaux riches Verdurins.

"'Swann's Way' is not a book to read on the train, skipping over the pages with one eye on the landscape; it is a book of true originality and profundity to the point of strangeness, claiming the reader's attention and even seizing it forcibly....A novel of analysis, yes; but I know of few novels in which the analysis penetrates so deep. At times you want to cry out, 'Enough!' as to a surgeon who spares no detail in describing an operation. Yet you never say it. You keep on turning the pages feverishly in order to see further into the souls of these characters."

Elie-Joseph Bois, Le Temps, 11/13/1913

"It is a picture of a society that is overcultured and neurotic, highly-strung and anemic, but interesting, human, amusing, civilized."

Burton Rascoe, New York Herald Tribune (1924-1966), 11/26/1922

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