Jane Smiley in Salon:
"You are going to find that he is both more friendly and more alien than you ever imagined. You are going to be charmed and also offended, sometimes disapproving, and occasionally bored. Quite often you are going to be impressed -- his capacity for thinking things through is going to seem almost infinitely great. Mostly, though, if you are like I was, you are going to come to anticipate your daily what? -- Dose? Encounter? Immersion? Meditation? -- with greater and greater eagerness but also greater and greater languor. You are going to come, at least in your own way, to feel French. When you have finished "In Search of Lost Time," you will be convinced that you know something visceral about Frenchness, and that that knowledge is important."