I grew up reading Enid Blyton, wondering what was ginger beer and desperately wanting some for my own “secret island” and other adventures. So it’s unsurprising that I understood the value Proust placed on the taste of a madeleine, decades before I tasted one myself, decades before I read any Proust.

This is one idea that I had about reading Proust’s cycle of novels, In Search of Lost Time, for many years. These canonical works carry a metaphorical (and literal) weight even when we’ve not read them: we accumulate expectations the whole time we are choosing other books to read and not read.

So I thought to write about Proust and expectations and, along the way, avoid spoilers. (Although some of you know— Andrew, Emma, Kaggsy, Reese, and perhaps others?—and at least one of you—Bill—is reading now.) That I could write about how my expectations were true or false, and share some passages (for those of you who might wonder whether his style is a match for your taste).

Having finished Swann’s Way (1913; Trans. Moncrieff and Kilmartin), my idea that it’s a love story has already been proven true. If this passage is intimidatingly long, skip to the final six words; Proust has a way of leading you through the labyrinth, evoking many thoughts and feelings but, then, halting suddenly at the end of a corridor to clearly draw a conclusion.

“And this malady which Swann’s love had become had so proliferated, was so closely interwoven with all his habits, with all his actions, with his thoughts, his health, his sleep,  his life, even with what he hoped for after his death, was so utterly inseparable from him, that it would have been impossible to eradicate it without almost entirely destroying him; as surgeons say, his love was no longer operable.”

Habits, actions, thoughts, health, sleep—even, life itself: everything revolves around love at this juncture. (Many times I’ve struggled to turn the pages of a classic until a love story emerged. Henry James, I’m looking at you. Your sentences have nearly lost me, but I’ve stuck around to see how things ended for your lovers.)

Another expectation was more scenes than exposition, and rooted by sensory details (those madeleines provoked this idea, I suppose: thinking that anyone who focussed on the taste of a specific dessert also would be concerned with inviting us to imagine ourselves into a relationship—or, an experience—or, a landscape).

And, if this excerpt is too long, simply note how quickly circumstances alter cases—how melancholy can turn to sweetness. But here is Swann thinking about the woman he loves, and how dramatically his feelings can swing.

“…if he had been forced to stay beside her, to do what she asked, then how completely would all the trivial details of Swann’s life which seemed to him now so melancholy have taken on, for the very reason that they would at the same time have formed part of Odette’s life—like this lamp, this orangeade, this armchair, which had absorbed so much of his dreams, which materialised so much of his longing—a sort of super-abundant sweetness and a mysterious destiny.”

Proust does not only write about emotions here, but a lamp, a chair, and a drink: concrete elements in his scene that invite us to visualise (or invite us to step into the atmosphere he’s creating).

This is how the book opens, actually, with a lovely extended scene: someone is in bed in the evening, with a book and a surprising amount of detail about pillows. There is a sense of half-wakefulness, with talk of waking periodically and wondering whether/how the room is lit, where the book held has gone, and how/if time has passed. Phrases fall into other phrases like shifts of light move, swiftly and subtly, right from the start.

All of that fit with my expectation of musings on memory: what and how we remember. But what I did not expect, was the focus on thought in general, on the broader workings of the mind, on that indefinable idea—consciousness. This is the longest quoted passage yet, so here’s the scoop: people’s desires to connect—and, disconnect—often don’t align.

“Later on, whenever a long spell of reading had put me in a mood for conversation, the friend to whom I was longing to talk would at that very moment have finished indulging himself in the delights of conversation, and wanted to be left to read undisturbed. And if I had just been thinking of my parents with affection, and forming resolutions of the kind most calculated to please them, they would have been using the same interval of time to discover some misdeed that I had already forgotten, and would begin to scold me severely as I was about to fling myself into their arms.”

Though written over a century ago, this is relatable. When you want to discuss your reading, your companion wants to read (and vice versa). Classics feeling unexpectedly relevant and relatable: I regularly need to re-learn that. But I also expected more direct musings on—and experiences residing in—memory, rather than just the ordinary inner-workings of a character’s mind.

The final passage flagged to share contains my most startling surprise; I had understood this to be a story about a set of characters who were all very comfortable and well-to-do economically. (Maybe because I had an upbringing in which there were no madeleines. Maybe because the white plumped linens on the cover image also had no relationship to my own life and experience.) But Proust overturned that expectation. And, here, there is no shortcut for the passage (but, it’s the last—maybe best—one).

“…M. Legrandin had barely acknowledged the courtesy, and then with an air of surprise, as though he had not recognised us, and with that distant look characteristic of people who do not wish to be agreeable and who, from the suddenly receding depths of his eyes, seem to have caught sight of you at the far end of an interminably straight road and at so great a distance that they content themselves with directing towards you an almost imperceptible movement of the head, commensurate with your doll-like dimensions.”

In the seconds that it takes you to read this passage, seconds have passed for M. Legrandin too. Someone has nodded at him; he’s instinctively returned their gaze; he’s assessed and altered his expression (if only in his eyes); and made a determination. All in mere seconds.

The nodder in this passage, who has acknowledged M. Legrandin in public, must wonder about that “almost imperceptible movement” of his head.

But the reader knows exactly what M. Legrandin means: he has pronounced the nodder “doll like”. A small thing, a plaything, a posable object to be recognised in private but not in public.

That some of these characters are judged the players and some the play-things, this is not an aspect of the story I’d anticipated, but perhaps because surprises can be delightful, it’s now what I’m most keen to explore. And I hope there’s an abundance of madeleines.

About a third of the way into the second volume now, there’s plenty of dismay about who’s included and excluded from whose homes, and frequently opinions held by those who don’t count are dismissed. Not a single madeleine to be seen.

If you’ve read any Proust, I’d love to hear how your expectations aligned and diverged; if you haven’t, I’d love to hear about a book that dislodged some/all of your expectations.