First of all, I'm new here and my name is Jordan. Hello!
I stumbled upon this forum looking for a good place to ask a question about "In Search of Lost Time" by Marcel Proust.
I'm close to finishing my first reading of Swann's Way and I have mixed feelings.
The prose and the sentiments are incredibly beautiful and make me want to keep reading. I love the way that it's written. It flows while also being unpredictable. I can relate to how the narrator *sees* and thinks.
But my problem is that other than the narrator, and the narrator's grandmother (the one who always goes to the garden when it rains), are all dreadfully unlikable characters that i feel a physical distaste for. by part two of the book, where the narrator is no longer a character but is talking about Swan and his friends and lifestyle..... by goddess are all these people so awful! I get mixed feelings reading it because i read a beautiful or humorous passage that makes me want to immerse myself in reading it, but then i find myself spending time with all these uptight, repressed, passive-agressive, self-important freaks who can't communicate and i simply cannot relate to a single one of them.
So here's my question -- do the characters in later books in the series become more likable and relatable? I relate to narrator and the narrator's grandmother but i cannot relate to anyone else in the book, and for me to get desirably immersed in a novel the characters have to be people that I enjoy being around. I'd really like to keep reading Proust because there's something that attracts me to his writing, but if he only writes about ****ty people then I will not continue the series. Please tell me there's better characters further into the series !!