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Title: Within a Budding Grove

Subtitle: Remembrance of Things Past, Volume 2

Author: Marcel Proust, C. K. Scott Moncrieff (translator)

Narrator: Neville Jason

Format: Unabridged

Length: 25 hrs and 33 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-04-12

Publisher: Naxos AudioBooks

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 131 votes

Genres: Classics, European Literature

Publisher's Summary:

Remembrance of Things Past is one of the monuments of 20th century literature. Neville Jasons widely praised abridged version has rightly become an audiobook landmark and now, upon numerous requests, he is recording the whole work unabridged which, when complete, will run for some 140 hours.

Within a Budding Grove is the second of seven volumes. The young narrator, experiencing his youthful sexuality, falls under the spell of a group of adolescent girls, succumbs to the charms of the enchanting Gilberte, and visits a brothel where he meets Rachel. His impressions of life are also stimulated by the painter, Elstir, and his encounter with another girl, Albertine.

Members Reviews:

One young nubile girl and then another ...

My first recommendation when reading Proust is the reader MUST make sure they have a reliable bookmark, because when (not if, but when) you lose your place your faulty memory will not be able to remember exactly where you just were. One young nubile girl starts to blend into another young nubile girl who looks at this point a lot like her friend. One picked flower starts to smell like another from an earlier page; a page that seemed to exist a whole lifetime ago. One young man with mommy issues starts to look almost exactly like another young man with grand-mommy issues.

That being said, you don't read Proust for the lines. You read Proust for everything else. It is those moments between plot points where all the rich texture resides. There is something languorous about just simply letting Proust's prose wash over you ~~~ wave after wave. Suddenly, you really don't care if you've already read a certain page because you are content and you recognize that you will read it again in just a few pages anyway and it will be beautiful and true all over again.

Neville Jason's narration is a fantastic crutch. I use the narration to keep me paced as I read the text. I tried this approach first with Joyce and it worked so well I used it with Pynchon. The listening/reading approach is perfect for Proust.

Jason Brings Proust to Life

Would you consider the audio edition of Within a Budding Grove to be better than the print version?

Yes

Which character as performed by Neville Jason was your favorite?

Baron de Charlus

Any additional comments?

I have just listened to all seven volumes of In Search of Lost Time so these comments apply to the whole series.

Jason's narration of this poetic work is "sans pareil." He gives all the characters a distinctive voice making it much easier to follow.His pronunciation of the french names is impeccable.

His English pronunciation is almost as good. Given Jason's mid-Atlantic plummy accent and the work's preoccupation with the upper class, his pronunciation of (the unfortunately frequently recurring word) "analogous" is teeth grating. (Hint: it should be pronounced with a hard "g.")

Nevertheless, Bravo Neville! (and of course Proust)

Philosophy and Psychology in guise of Literature

If one is not emotionally repulsed by the snobbery and pretentious French world at the time of the Dreyfus affair described within this book than one probably is missing out on what the author is trying to get at. Volume I needs to be read in order to follow what's going on in this book.