Swann's Way (Version 2)

Written by:
Marcel Proust
Narrated by:
Expatriate

Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
3
Narrator
1
Release Date
August 2016
Duration
19 hours 4 minutes
Summary
"Swann's Way" is the first of the seven parts of Marcel Proust's great autobiographical novel "In Search of Lost Time." From the very first page the reader is drawn into the many facets of memory, memory as prompted by all the human senses. "Swann's Way (Du côté de chez Swann, sometimes translated as The Way by Swann's) (1913) was rejected by a number of publishers, including Fasquelle, Ollendorff, and the Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF). André Gide was famously given the manuscript to read to advise NRF on publication, and leafing through the seemingly endless collection of memories and philosophizing or melancholic episodes, came across a few minor syntactic errors, which made him decide to turn the work down in his audit. Proust eventually arranged with the publisher Grasset to pay the cost of publication himself. When published it was advertised as the first of a three-volume novel (Bouillaguet and Rogers, 316-7). Du côté de chez Swann is divided into four parts: "Combray I" (sometimes referred to in English as the "Overture"), "Combray II," "Un Amour de Swann," and "Noms de pays: le nom." ('Names of places: the name'). A third-person novella within Du côté de chez Swann, "Un Amour de Swann" is sometimes published as a volume by itself. As it forms the self-contained story of Charles Swann's love affair with Odette de Crécy and is relatively short, it is generally considered a good introduction to the work and is often a set text in French schools. "Combray I" is also similarly excerpted; it ends with the famous madeleine cake episode, introducing the theme of involuntary memory. In early 1914, André Gide, who had been involved in NRF's rejection of the book, wrote to Proust to apologize and to offer congratulations on the novel. "For several days I have been unable to put your book down.... The rejection of this book will remain the most serious mistake ever made by the NRF and, since I bear the shame of being very much responsible for it, one of the most stinging and remorseful regrets of my life." - Summary by Wikipedia
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Bruce H.

I did not enjoy this reading at all. The narrator, “Expatriate from Bangor, Maine,” imparts to nearly every sentence the exact same inflections and intonations, as if all those thousands of sentences are exactly equal in importance or are equally revelatory and surprising to the reader. They aren’t. Yes, Proust’s sentences are long and probably hard to read well out loud, but if one imparts the same melody and emotional pitch to nearly all of them, the effect is droning and annoying. I made it through four of the sixteen hours. I kept hoping he’d abandon this repetitive, one-style-fits-all reading. Unfortunately he didn’t.

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