LETTERS TO THE LADY UPSTAIRS

Fourth Estate, 112pp, £10, Oldie price £8.14 inc p&p

What a nightmare it must have been to be Marcel Proust; and, arguably, even more of a nightmare to live next door to him. This new collection of letters from the author of A La

Recherche du Temps Perdu to his upstairs neighbour shows our dressing-gowned aesthete in dyspeptic mode, constantly moaning about banging and clattering disturbing his peace. Here is the base stuff of life rather than the elevated stuff of art – and it’s all the more entertaining for it.

Graham Robb in the Spectator reported that ‘Petrol fumes and tree pollen drifted up from the boulevard. In the absence of maman’s goodnight kiss, he sedated himself with valerian and heroin, but there was no escaping the blaring of klaxons, the thud of demolition and the renovation of his neighbour’s toilet: “She keeps changing the seat — probably having it widened”,’ and judged that ‘Proust’s would-be discreet references to “torment” evoke a grimace of rancour and rage’.

In this three-way correspondence between Proust, the dentist who lived above him and (especially) the dentist’s wife, Mme Williams, however, the Guardian’s Claire Kohda Hazelton discerned ‘a simple celebration of friendship’ in their ‘intimate, passionate missives’.

Writing for the Artsdesk, Sebastian Scotney applauded the work of the translator, Lydia Davis. She aimed, he wrote, to ‘hew very close’ to Proust’s style, and succeeded brilliantly, ‘revealing Proust’s brilliant, darting mind at work in an unfettered, conversational manner’.

The LRB’S Michael Wood was more sceptical: ‘Twenty-six letters from Proust to his upstairs neighbours at 102 boulevard Haussmann, none of the letters heard of before, many of them complaining about the noise: how could this not be a parody? And isn’t it too broad a stroke to make the husband a dentist? The wife a delicate, suffering lady who plays the harp? Please.’