How Proust Can Change Your Life

Reviews

"This engaging book is one of the most entertaining pieces of literary criticism I have read in a long while." "De Botton's little book is so charming, amusing and sensible that it may even itself change your life." "A self-help manual for the intelligent person . . . witty, funny, and tonic." "Delightfully original. . . . As well as being criticism, biography, literary history and a reader's guide to Proust's masterpiece, How Proust Can Change Your Life is a self-help book in the deepest sense of the term." "Curious, humorous, didactic and dazzling. . . . It contains more human interest and play of fancy than most fiction." "This is a genius-level piece of writing that manages to blend literary biography with self-help and tongue-in-cheek with the profound. The quirky, early 1900s French author Marcel Proust acts as the vessel for surprisingly impressive nuggets of wisdom on down-to-earth topics such as why you should never sleep with someone on the first date, how to protect yourself against lower back pain, and how to cope with obnoxious neighbors. Here's proof that our ancestors had just as much insight as the gurus du jour and perhaps a lot more wit. De Botton simultaneously pokes fun at the self-help movement and makes a significant contribution to its archives." Expand reviews