A guide to Proust’s ‘Remembrance’

After moving to France in 1972, Patrick Alexander tried several times to read Marcel Proust’s “The Remembrance of Things Past’’ before he was swept up in the 3,000-page masterpiece by the man he calls “this most sensitive, subtle and comic of writers.’’ To help a reading group, Alexander wrote a summary of the major characters, French history, and each of the seven volumes. Now Vintage has published Alexander’s charming guide, “Marcel Proust’s Search for Lost Time.’’ And what of the buttery madeleine, a taste of which triggers a flood of memories in the narrator? In an early version, it was a piece of dry toast.