Bud Smith’s Reviews > In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower > Status Update

We’ve been hanging with Wizard-name Elstir, who is not a wizard at all, but one of the finest painters in the world, and the good news is Elstir knows Odette d’Crecy (painted her portrait in drag 25 years earlier) and knows the gang of little girls young Proust has tried to meet on the esplanade and beach all summer—small world—feels like George Lucas’s Star Wars, everything/everyone is Skywalker-related

further adventures at the seaside resort of Balbec: outgrowing/out-pacing a formerly advanced an old friend named Bloche; meeting a new friend, Robert Saint-Loupe and his aristocrat family; Francoise being a Sancho Panza-esque fool’s genius; waiting in vain for grandma to knock on the adjoining bedroom wall to say goodnight

Oh and I should say, it’s a coming of age story, in linear time from early boyhood to now aged sixteen or so, and not mentioning school or at least setting any scenes in a classroom (a classmate does lend him some novels that change his life) (Bergotte). I’m not complaining about not ‘goin to school’ btw

Hanging at Swann’s, chilling, I find it kind of funny that we are 600 plus pages into Remembrances of Things Past and Proust has not once mentioned school, that I can recall, I know he was in school himself at this age (which his narrator in the book is) and not home-schooled by a governess, but we are staying away from any kind of ‘work’ and just writing about luxury and social circles and art

This kid cannot be stopped. If you thought the one page letter handed to the servant, addressed to his Mama eating dinner downstairs, imploring her to come up and give him an extra good night kiss at age 8 was a lot, what can we say about the sixteen page letter written to the father of the little girl he one-sidedly loves? The kid cannot be stopped.

This shit is hilarious, it might as well be a Bob’s Burgers transposed into a fancy house in Paris, 1886, and some old man weirdo ambassador comes to dinner for the whole episode. The opening of this 2nd novel in the series is wonderful, I couldn’t love the characters more, Francoise the reluctant chef, mama, the kid’s father, even ol celebrity actor Berma who secretly sucks despite the applause