"À la recherche" made a decisive break with the 19th-century realist and plot-driven novel, populated by people of action and people representing social and cultural groups or morals.Although parts of the novel could be read as an exploration of snobbery, deceit, jealousy and suffering and although it contains a multitude of realistic details, the focus is not on the development of a tight plot or of a coherent evolution but on a multiplicity of perspectives and on the formation of experience.