From the living room of Mrs. Swann at Balbec, Albertine to Gilberte ...

"In the shadow of young girls in flower" consists of immediately following "From Swann's Way" with the abortive romance between the author and Gilberte Swann and the first visit to Balbec of the author, where he met Albertine. Structure quite wobbly, so Proust imposed by the constraints of publishing, but does not alter the pleasure of reading. Sometimes Proust do too much, he wanders into some unnecessarily convoluted pages. I admit I hurt too, sometimes with punctuation of Proust, which does not facilitate the reading of certain phrases. But the purpose is of such subtlety, intelligence and sensitivity the author hit so obviously, language is so beautiful that these remarks will weigh anything under the jubilation it feels to bathe in this literary ocean. Everyone will have his favorite passages, those we note in a notebook to be able to review them later. And then there are these new characters Proust introduced into this second volume, significant milestones of the work and the internal path author: Albertine, of course, but also Saint-Loup, M. de Charlus, Bergotte, Elstir ... He finally has this unforgettable evocation of the Normandy coast, this resort Balbec, sea, cliffs, summer visitors of the Belle Epoque ... An age and civilization swallowed up by reliving the magic a writer of genius, and are part of the ever French literary imagination.