Review of audiobook: I haven’t read Proust before. My strong praise for this book is that I enjoyed the audiobook, and I know I would enjoy reading the text more. The critique I have of the audiobook is for the format itself, not the reader nor production. The reader and reading were sublime in execution.

The production included an interview with an expert in translating and teaching Proust. (For some reason, this interview was included twice, rendering the total recording 30 minutes longer than it should have been. Disappointing because I was enjoying the discussion and thought it was going to continue.)

In a work of literature of this caliber, seeing the text matters. I’m not capable of reading it in the original French, but was enlightened by the expert’s interview as to Proust’s use of long sentences and punctuation. These 2 literary signatures should be possible to preserve in English translation, but are not appropriately represented in an audio recording.