Summary

The first section of The Man in the Red Coat consists of pages 1-49. The book sets an opening scene: three Frenchmen arrive in London in June 1885. Julian Barnes, the author, strays from the scene for a moment, however, turning instead to the red coat which gives this book its title. The red coat is the distinctive garb of a young man, painted dreamily by John Singer Sargent at home, with highly expressive fingers and a suggestive aura – something about the man’s fingers and the coat’s tassels hanging near his groin evoke sexual tension, says Barnes. The painting, “Dr. Pozzi at Home,” depicts renowned doctor Samuel Jean Pozzi, a Frenchman born into a common, bourgeois Protestant family who ends up in 1885 travelling to England with two companions, Prince Edmond de Polignac and Count Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac. His companions far outrank him...