In Search of Lost Time: In The Shadow of Young Girls in Flower - A Graphic Novel

ISBN: 9781631493676

A strange affair with reading the second volume of In Search of Lost Time: In The Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, the graphic novel version, within 24 hours, when the original text took me almost two weeks to read. Perhaps a critical difference between a graphic novel adaption and reading the original book, translated by James Grieve. However, it doesn’t mean that the graphic novel lacks substance or textures because it is a beautiful medium for telling the story. To a degree, it is a more organic approach to adapting a novel because it is both a book and one that uses less text but with detailed illustrations/art. The story is the basis, the Graphic novel is an articulation of that work, and then the cinema is a representation of the book. Still, one would need to know a skilled surgeon to focus on the difference between the three mediums.

Like the first volume of Swann’s Way, this book is illustrated and adapted by Stéphane Heuet from Proust’s text and translated by Arthur Goldhammer, who also did the first graphic volume. One of the motifs of this part of the novel is the all-girl gang that attracts our Narrator. He has strong feelings for Albertine, a gang member, but is also drawn to the others. This social grouping is separated from the others because they are young, playing games, and dealing with basic teenage activities. Our Narrator, around the same age, is already focused on moneyed society and what that means to him. Of the four volumes I have read (including the first two graphic novel versions), In The Shadow of Young Girls in Flower is my favorite. It reminds me of my school years and my attraction for the Glam Rock girls who would hang out at the Quad in our High School. They seemed to be unobtainable and a distance from my desires for them. All things considered, the second volume of In Search of Lost Time is the most Rock n’ Roll of the Proust books.