Tuesday, 7 May 2024

The Man in the Red Coat - Julian Barnes


Ok. This one is on me. The other week - short of ideas - I picked the first Julian Barnes book that was available in my Italian e-library. 

I read it was about the life of a doctor (Pozzi) whose portrait had been painted by Sargent and I mistakenly assumed this would be a work of fiction along the lines of Flaubert's Parrot

Instead it was a couple of hundred pages of pedantically detailed accounts of the lives of Pozzi, his family, and his circle of posh friends. Even the occasional humorous remarks by Barnes didn't hit the mark with me as I read this book while on auto-pilot, having lost all interest in it after a dozen pages. 

Reminder: maybe don't read reviews beforehand, but at least read a book's synopsis next time...

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