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Title details for The Man in the Red Coat by Julian Barnes - Available

The Man in the Red Coat

by Julian Barnes
Saul Reichlin
Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
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2 of 2 copies available
From the Man Booker Prize–winning author of The Sense of an Ending, a rich, witty, revelatory tour of
Belle Epoque Paris, via the remarkable life story of the pioneering surgeon Samuel Pozzi
In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' intellectual shopping: a prince, a
count, and a commoner with an Italian name. In time, each of these men would achieve a certain level of renown,
but who were they then and what was the significance of their sojourn in England? Answering these questions, Julian
Barnes unfurls the stories of their lives, which play out against the backdrop of the Belle Epoque in Paris. Our guide
through this world is Samuel Pozzi, society doctor, freethinker, and man of science with a famously complicated
private life who was the subject of one of John Singer Sargent's greatest portraits. In this vivid tapestry of people
(Henry James, Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, and James Whistler, among many others), place, and
time, we see not merely an epoch of glamour and pleasure but, surprisingly, one of violence, prejudice, and nativism—
with more parallels to our own age than we might imagine. The Man in the Red Coat is, at once, a fresh portrait of the
Belle Epoque, an illuminating look at the long-standing exchange of ideas between Britain and France, and a life of a
man who lived passionately in the moment but whose ideas and achievements were far ahead of his time.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    February 18, 2020

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781980057642
      • File size: 263674 KB
      • Duration: 09:09:19

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      December 16, 2019
      Inspired by seeing John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Samuel Jean Pozzi at the National Gallery in London, Booker Prize–winner Barnes (The Only Story) investigates the life of the 19th-century French “society doctor” in this wry, essayistic, and art-filled account. Crediting Pozzi with “transforming French gynaecology from a mere subdivision of general medicine into a discipline in its own right,” Barnes sketches his subject’s relationships with Henry James, Marcel Proust, and Oscar Wilde, among others, and illuminates the Belle Époque in France, a period that might retroactively appear as “a last flowering of a settled high society,” but at the time felt more like “an age of neurotic, even hysterical national anxiety.” Beginning with Pozzi’s June 1885 trip to London, Barnes episodically charts the doctor’s rise from “Bergerac boy to Parisian high society,” recounting his marriage to a railroad heiress; his numerous affairs, including with actress Sarah Bernhardt; and his advancement of modern medical procedures. Barnes’s wit (“bad smells are good reminders”) and expert plundering of source material (the Princess of Monaco called Pozzi “disgustingly handsome”) add a lightness of touch that counterbalances the heavy load of names, dates, and obscure historical events. Full of admiration and deep feeling for its “progressive, international, and constantly inquisitive” subject, this sparkling account takes on added resonance in a moment marked by a return of nativism. Agent: Nicole Aragi, Aragi, Inc.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Aping exactly the hauteur of a French aristocrat, narrator Saul Reichlin embodies La Belle Epoque. Dr. Samuel Pozzi (the man in the red coat ) was a climber and a dandy. Vanity, adultery, and the acquisition of rare objects were his passions. Booker Prize winner Barnes sets traditional narration aside to give a pre-COVID embrace to an era that is known--if it all-- by the naughty quotations of the naughty Oscar Wilde. Dueling was safer than surgery, and it seems vital to be sure that the curtains on which Pozzi's blood was splattered were from Liberty & Co. You can reject this production in horror or surrender to the haunting, glorious music of the past. B.H.C. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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