Conversational cunning

Listening to a good reading is tripling my pleasure in Proust. I’ve read this section more than once before but never has it come home to me so strongly what a devious little sneak Marcel is.

You need to know that for months he has been trying to engineer a meeting with the aristocratic Mme de Guermantes and is desperate to get into her social circle. He knows perfectly well that she’s the aunt of his friend Saint-Loup. Here’s how he goes about it:

Maylis Besserie : Scattered Love

Maylis Besserie’s first novel based on the life of Samuel Beckett was awarded the Prix Goncourt. She is fortunate to have as her translator Clíona Ní Ríordáin, a lecturer in Irish Literature at the University of Notre Dame. Set in the nursing home, the Résidence Tier Temps, where Beckett spent the last few months of his life, her book was an elegant and compassionate account of Beckett’s life and work. The only fault I could find with it was the English title Yell, Sam, If You Still Can; why not call the The Third Age, as in the original French?