"Those who found reading Proust too grand an undertaking over the years because of distractions and deficiencies of their own, might well rush to reconsider after confronting this dazzlingly elegant biography."-Philip Roth -- Philip Roth "Taylor's endeavor is not to explain the life by the novel or the novel by the life but to show how different events, different emotional upheavals, fired Proust's imagination and, albeit sometimes completely transformed, appeared in his work. The result is a very subtle, thought-provoking book."-Anka Muhlstein, author of Balzac's Omelette and Monsieur Proust's Library -- Anka Muhlstein "A sensitive study of literature's favorite neurasthenic ... Readers of Proust will be fascinated to find clues as to who his characters were in real life, and they should be moved to appreciation by Taylor's assessment of Proust's accomplishment ... A densely packed and rewarding book."-Kirkus Reviews Kirkus Reviews