The journey of a writer tracing the footsteps of Marcel Proust in Normandy goes awry right from the start, as the French couple he is friends with wants to visit a Breton town where Proust never set foot. The small group settles into the Hotel Armor. The overbearing concierge, brimming with strength and clichés about "us" and "the others," provides the ailing writer with plenty of food for thought. After his wife rushes off to give a lecture and the friendly couple returns to Paris, he is left alone in the dreary Tréboul, cheerfully grumbling about decadence and boredom. His own quest for lost time parodies every form of pathos, as the first-person narrator, full of self-irony and wit, dismantles one supposed certainty after another, ultimately even his own dream of writing a book about Proust.