Overture Summary

Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust is the story of a young boy's journey through life. It is suggested that the ambiguous, unnamed narrator is partially autobiographical. The narrator experiences several romances that lead the majority of the action in the novel. Remembrance of Things Past is the biography not just of the narrator, but of the entire social group in which he lives.

The narrator describes waking in the middle of the night; sometimes he wakes to thoughts of books that he has read recently, other times to thoughts of women he is attracted to. At other times, he thinks he is back in his room at Combray where he used to visit often as a young boy, or at Mme. de Saint-Loup's house where he visited as a young man. Once he is wide awake, he begins to reminisce about...