Structure

Julian Barnes' The Man in the Red Coat is not divided into chapters or parts. Rather, it flows from beginning to end with the only structural units being paragraphs.

The book also does not move in chronological order. It begins with the description of a trip to London by three Frenchmen in 1885, then proceeds to introduce those men and the era they live in. It moves between central figures, focusing most heavily on Montesquiou and Pozzi, but throughout the book Barnes fails to clearly isolate one-time period within the larger era he describes. He speaks of the Belle Époque in a general sense, without highlighting the exact years when it began or ended, and since his book is people with many figures, he dwells on them seemingly at random, for example mentioning Oscar Wilde's trial at the beginning of the book, then speaking of him prior to...