In Search of Lost Time: Volume 2: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (Marcel Proust)

Marcel Proust)
In Search of Lost Time: Volume 2: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower

I bought this whilst in France having ditched The Rainbow and went to the local booksellers. The only French novel in English that I hadn't read was this so that fact and that it's apparently a must read I bought it. It's slow going with a lot about his teenage love for a girl and his emotions for her whilst she seems to be into him and after. A lot is about notable French people at the time so much of it I don't really understand, or care about, and a lot about the customs and foibles of that time. Again, not so interesting. The musings are interesting but become repetitive and he goes down so many avenues about feelings of love, and being out of love, with ifs and buts that any romance and emotion is destroyed by analysis. I read that Proust was a man about town when young then spent years as a virtual recluse. It sort of shows in this. I acknowledge that I critiquing a book that the French see as sacrosanct and that many others would have made a much better analysis of. I did try my best and got past 200 pages although not quite as far as him going to Normandy which I was looking forward to.