The Red Hat

If Oscar Wilde were alive and well and writing in the 1990s, The Red Hat, by renowned critic John Bayley, is precisely the kind of playful, coyly erotic work of fiction he would have written. Set in Holland and in Provence, the first part of this elegant literary jaunt follows a trio of young Vermeer aficionados as they set forth for the Hague to see a Vermeer exhibition. What begins as a simple journey turns quickly into a cheerfully tortuous race against time when the group unwittingly--and mi