The representation of everyday life in the book “The Man in the Red Coat” by Julian Barnes

The aim of the study is to identify the forms of representation of the ideological component of Belle Epoque everyday life in J. Barnes’ book “The Man in the Red Coat”. The scientific novelty of the study is due to its theoretical perspective, which made it possible to complement the ideas about the potential of documentary fiction, aimed at depicting the everyday life of a particular historical epoch. The article highlights the importance of the topic of historical memory for British literature after 1945 and Barnes’ understanding of it throughout his writing career. The study shows the pattern of both his reference to the history of France at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and the choice of a means of its presentation, i.e., images of everyday life. The results showed that in the analyzed work J. Barnes creates a documentarily reliable and artistically convincing image of Parisian everyday life of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The collage, made up of facts and details, ecphrases and photographic images, catalogs and collections of curiosities, is held together by images representing very different ideologies. The author believes that the reminder of the freedom of thought of this time will allow his contemporaries to overcome the narrowness of social thinking, which consists primarily in chauvinism.