In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower. Part One

Proust worked painstakingly for 10 years on the novel “In the Shade of Young Girls in Bloom”—one of the books of the cycle “In Search of Lost Time,” from 1909 to 1919—and precisely this book brought him, at once, both success and fame as an incomparable stylist. Essentially, the plot of the novel is the transformation of a boy into a young man, first real friendship, first love, first steps into high society, first connections with women—quite a traditional French story of the education of feelings. But the plot framework only sets off the true virtues of the work: the inimitable beauty of Proust’s language, the precision of his style, and his truly legendary, jeweler-like attention to details.