Editors Reads Verdict
The volume in which Proust's prose reaches its first great apex — the sea at Balbec, the young women against the sea, the consciousness that processes them — and in which the emotional architecture of the whole Search is established.
What We Loved
- The Balbec sequences are among the most beautiful prose in any novel — the description of the sea, the hotel, the light
- The introduction of Albertine and the petite bande establishes the emotional stakes for volumes to come
- The friendship with Saint-Loup is one of the most affectionately rendered relationships in the Search
Minor Drawbacks
- The Berma passages, with their extended reflections on theatrical performance, require patience from readers unfamiliar with the period's theatrical culture
- The pace is necessarily slow — this is not a criticism unique to this volume but it is especially pronounced here
Key Takeaways
- → Adolescent desire is not a simple thing — it involves projection, idealisation, and the constant transformation of its object
- → The seaside resort is a social crucible in which class, desire, and performance interact in unusually concentrated form
- → Art — as embodied by Bergotte's writing and Berma's acting — is not a product but a practice of attention
| Author | Marcel Proust |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Penguin Classics |
| Pages | 624 |
| Published | January 1, 1919 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Classic Fiction, French Literature, Modernist Fiction |
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower Review
The second volume of In Search of Lost Time won the Prix Goncourt in 1919, which seems in retrospect both perfectly appropriate and slightly comic — appropriate because the book deserved major recognition, slightly comic because what Proust had written was not a prize-winning novel in any conventional sense but the second instalment of a work of such ambitious strangeness that the jury can barely have known what they were awarding. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower is, among other things, the volume in which Proust finds his full range.
The volume divides into two large parts. The first takes place in Paris: the narrator attends a performance by the actress Berma, which he has anticipated so intensely that the real performance can only disappoint; he becomes acquainted with the writer Bergotte, whose prose he has idolised, and discovers that the man is not the work; and above all he begins to move in the orbit of the Guermantes family, whose aristocratic splendour will become the next volume’s obsession. These Paris chapters are primarily about the gap between imagination and reality — the way that the mind, in loving something, creates a version of it that no actual encounter can satisfy.
The second and greater part moves to Balbec, a fictional seaside resort in Normandy, where the narrator travels with his grandmother. The Balbec sequences contain some of the most extraordinary descriptive prose in the Search: the sea as experienced from a hotel room, the early morning light on the bay, the restaurant with its walls of glass through which the fishing community outside can observe the wealthy diners within. Huxley’s best writing is occasionally compared to Proust’s, but what Proust does at Balbec — the way he renders the experience of a place as a total, shifting, temporally unstable thing — is something else entirely.
At Balbec, the narrator encounters the petite bande, a group of young women cycling along the seafront, and above all Albertine, whose face and manner will occupy him for the next three volumes. The encounter is managed with extraordinary psychological precision: the narrator does not fall in love with a woman but with a series of impressions of a woman, each slightly different, none of them finally adding up to a stable person. This is not a flaw in his perception but its most accurate feature — Proust’s fundamental argument about love is that its object is always partly a creation of the lover’s consciousness, which is why possession never satisfies.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower" about?
The second volume of In Search of Lost Time follows the narrator's adolescent infatuations, his deepening friendships, and above all his summer at the seaside resort of Balbec — where he meets the circle of girls, including Albertine, who will dominate his inner life.
What are the key takeaways from "In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower"?
Adolescent desire is not a simple thing — it involves projection, idealisation, and the constant transformation of its object The seaside resort is a social crucible in which class, desire, and performance interact in unusually concentrated form Art — as embodied by Bergotte's writing and Berma's acting — is not a product but a practice of attention
Is "In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower" worth reading?
The volume in which Proust's prose reaches its first great apex — the sea at Balbec, the young women against the sea, the consciousness that processes them — and in which the emotional architecture of the whole Search is established.
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