With the famous dipping of the madeleine into his tea, Proust begins his fictional/auto-biographical journey through memory and time, alternately seeing his world through the eyes of a younger, more innocent Proust and the weary old man he has become. Random comments on people or places morph into paragraph- and page-long memories, coloured with the rosy tint of time and age, or not, as sometimes is the case. Throughout the novel we are generally confined to the time period of Proust's childhood, but the narrator is very loose with the time frame, effortlessly jumping back and forth through the memories of his boyhood, from the thrill of a mother's kiss to the beauty of flowers and grass along the way by Swann's.
The writing is flowery and beautiful, with long, flowing sentences that seem to evoke places and times buried within us all. Proust is a master of mental imagery, and through the mostly universal experience of his childhood - and while the particulars will not be identical for us all, the thoughts and ideas certainly will - we are able to relive our own childhood, our own desires and dreams, our own gradual awakening and loss of innocence.
While reading Proust, there is a sense that we have settled ourselves within his skin. The writing is so personal and intimate that we, for just a moment, become the little boy Proust, we share his feelings, we understand his pains. This can be uncomfortable at times, but the pleasure of such an intense journey far outweighs the 'warts and all' intimacy. While reading, it seems that nothing - not one thought or feeling - has been held back, and that Proust is willing and almost joyous at the prospect of baring his soul to the world in his six book masterpiece.
Halfway through the first volume, there is a short novella describing one of his father's friends, Swann, and his jealous courtship of the woman who would later become his wife. The change from an intimate 'I' to a less personal 'he' is at first dis-orienting, but thanks to the strength of the writing, this worry is soon dispelled. Of course, by the end of the novel, the purpose of Swann's interlude has become clearer, and it can be imagined that later volumes will shed more light on these mysteries.
There is not much to be said about Proust that hasn't been already, except that the sheer size and density of his work should not be an intimidating factor when reading. Take your time, be slow about it, and read him as the mood takes you. The rewards are there, on every single page, but they will also be there a year from now. And perhaps, when you are that one year older, the search for memory will be that much more desperate, and Proust's own search will be all the more rewarding.