I found myself getting easily away from the page when reading this, something about the verbiage of Proust would lose me every so often. I think that it’s because he would tend to go on precise tangents that were longer and more winding than I was used to which made it trickier for me to read, however, I did for the most part enjoy the reading. I don’t think that I’ve ever read a boo here the narrator was a child recounting their memories in this way and that allowed Proust to bring bourgeois French society to the page in a defamiliarized way. Instead of reading about a family drama where we sit within the family, the narration from a child’s perspective allows us to inhabit a pseudo fly on the wall. Not only do we experience the intricacies of the family through the child narrator but we also experience the thoughts of the child pre-repression. This allows the reader to examine scenarios, for example, the families’ obsession with class and their relation to M. Swan through both our adult lens and the child’s lens. Sometimes this proves to be a bit frustrating, for example when Swan is over for dinner I would’ve been interested in hearing what he was discussing with the family but the narrator was barred from the conversation and far more focused on getting his goodnight kiss from his mother. I also found it quite interesting that Proust would include such detail about his love for his mother, it makes me wonder about the timeline of Freud’s theories compared to when Proust was writing this novel and if he engaged with any of Freud’s theories at the time. It’s also interesting that this love and desire is such a large focus for Proust, choosing to finish the novel with a mention of again his mother’s kiss; on page 185, he talks about “which no mistress has been able to give me since that time because one doubts them even at the moment one believes in them, and can never possess their hearts as I received in a is my mother’s heart.” The strange personality quirks are carried from character to character and the narrator allows a unique perspective on this again because of the position of the child as someone who is not really listening or they can be here and listen because they’re just a child. I think my favourite quirk of the characters is Francoise who has an apathetic attitude towards human suffering but when faced with it in an immaterial way gets thrown into emotional turmoil. Overall I’d say it was an interesting read that I struggled to fully grasp at times but one that made me connect with my inner little child again.

My discussion question is about memory and how much you think of the story is tangible memory and how much was it embellished/made up