Living and dying with Marcel Proust

Prendergast (Counterfactuals), the general editor of Penguin's English reissues of Proust's work, sheds light on the novelist's rich sensory world in this bibliophile's treasure chest. Focusing on In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu in the original French), Prendergast lays out a Proustian feast in each chapter. "Pinks" examines color in Proust's writing (he called pink the "color of life"); "The Proust Effect" looks at the "strenuous work of forgetting and remembering" in Proust's sentences; and in "Death and Black Holes," Prendergast posits that "The world of the Recherche is accordingly death-haunted from start to finish." Prendergast comments on the structure of the work, too (it "remains loyal to the tradition" of a bildungsroman) , and gets into some linguistic nitty-gritty: the word life "recurs with even greater frequency" than the word time in Recherche. Well-chosen quotes enrich the text--Prendergast notes a particular description of a lunch as an example of Proust finding "the profound in things"--as does Prendergast's dry humor: he imagines Proust "choking on his croissant" over the thought of his novel functioning as a "how-to manual... about how to stop wasting one's life." This one's not to be missed. (June)

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Marcel Proust's death, but his literary legacy endures. His colossal novel in seven parts, In Search of Lost Time, is a 20th-century French masterpiece that continues to captivate readers and generate copious scholarship. Prendergast (French literature, King's Coll., Cambridge, and the British Acad.; Mirages and Mad Beliefs) analyzes various aspects of In Search of Lost Time, including Proust's use of color, especially shades of pink; his genius as a weaver of plotlines that incorporated 2,000-plus characters; and the role of the five senses in provoking long forgotten memories. He also attempts to debunk longstanding myths, arguing correctly that Proust's writing should not be reduced to just very long sentences, and that Proust actually preferred croissants to madeleines. Prendergast, who was general editor for the Penguin translation of In Search of Lost Time, generally cites remarkable Proust passages solely in English (only occasionally quoting from the original French text); Proust's brilliance as a writer still comes through in the translated texts, but Prendergast's analysis might have been enhanced by including more passages in French. VERDICT This book will prompt many to reread Proust. For readers interested in 20th-century French literature and individuals with Proustian affinities.--Erica Swenson Danowitz