Within a Budding Grove received the Prix Goncourt when it was published in 1919 and catapulted its author to overnight fame. It takes the autobiographical narrator of Swann's Way from childhood through adolescence. He loses interest in Gilberte and falls in love with Albertine, the dark girl on her bicycle, with 'that little beauty spot on her cheek, just under the eye.' Albertine, her friends, and the fictional Normandy resort of Balbec become the primary agents of recollection for him. The fin