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How Proust Can Change Your Life

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How Proust Can Change Your Life

By: Alain de Botton
Narrated by: Nicholas Bell
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About this listen

 For anyone who ever wondered what Marcel Proust had in mind when he wrote the one-and-a-quarter-million words of In Search of Lost Time (while bedridden no less), Alain de Botton has the answer. For, in this stylish, erudite and frequently hilarious book, de Botton dips deeply into Proust’s life and work - his fiction, letter, and conversations - and distils from them that rare self-help manual: one that is actually helpful. Here, tendered in prose almost as luminous as it’s subject’s, is advice on cultivating friendships, suffering successfully, recognising love and understanding why you should never sleep with someone on the first date. And here, too, is a generously perceptive literary biography that suggests that the master is as relevant today as he was in fin de siècle Paris.©1997 by Alain de Botton. (P)2010 Bolinda Publishing European Literary History & Criticism Literature & Fiction Personal Development Personal Success Philosophy World Literature Celebrity Funny Witty Inspiring

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Critic reviews

"This engaging book is one of the most entertaining pieces of literary criticism I have read in a long while." (The Sunday Telegraph)
"De Botton's little book is so charming, amusing and sensible that it may even itself change your life." (The Daily Telegraph)
"A self-help manual for the intelligent person . . . witty, funny, and tonic." (The New York Times Book Review)
"Delightfully original. . . . As well as being criticism, biography, literary history and a reader's guide to Proust's masterpiece, How Proust Can Change Your Life is a self-help book in the deepest sense of the term." (The New York Times)
"Curious, humorous, didactic and dazzling. . . . It contains more human interest and play of fancy than most fiction." (The New Yorker)
All stars
Most relevant
An entertaining adjunct to my current extended soirée into all things Combray. With some time to kill when not able to hunker down and give it my all, I decided to get to bottom out de Botton in more or less one sitting of just over five hours.

This seems to be self-help with a helping hand from a wide ranging reading of Proust and the ancillary of luminaries who enlighten as to what it all might mean. Great fun to be in the book looking out at someone looking in.

Will Proust change my life? He has....certainly to the extent that I got a trouble free holiday out of it. Will this? No.

Life before finishing Proust

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Some good points but Proust hasn't changed my life. Certainly, there is not enough room made for wisdom or philosophy in the world today.

A little dry but worthwhile

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An elegantly written perusal of aspects of Proust's writings and life. Lots of intelligent observations about how we may learn to enjoy life more and suffer less. Relaxed and chatty in style, with plenty of curious details if his life.
One anecdote I found particularly interesting was the brief meeting between Proust and Joyce. A cold, indifferent exchange with no engagement from either man.

Maybe a more appropriate title would be How What Proust Wrote Can Change Your Life. His life has contributed a work of stunning perception on a huge range of human predicaments, yet his life is not one many would choose to emulate, or rather suffer. Great sensitivity comes at a high price.

Sensitive and perceptive

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Probably 45 mins too long parts dragged but excellent nonetheless. AdeB never fails to tease out the nuggets and make you smile.

Humour

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If you could sum up How Proust Can Change Your Life in three words, what would they be?

Witty, elegant, affecting

What did you like best about this story?

Of all the audiobooks I have downloaded, this is the one I return to again and again. It's a clever book, written by a master of supremely elegant yet unnaffected prose, enhanced by its competent and non-irritating narrator. It isn't a self-help book in the true sense, thank goodness, although it encourages one to reflect on how one lives. I also learnt a lot about Proust the writer and the man, and I wish that I could go back in time and spend an evening in his evidently delightful company. Bravo Mr de Botton.

Prose at its most elegant, beautifully performed

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