In a Hotel Garden is a provocative work by the English novelist once described by Sir Frank Kermode as “an admirable and rare example of the writer-critic.” It is a captivating novella, written almost entirely in dialogue. In a Hotel Garden unfolds character and meaning with a lovely, meditative tension. The narrator Ben relates to his friends his enthralling encounter with a Jewish woman in the Dolomite Alps. The tale of her compulsive visit to a hotel garden in Siena––where her grandmother fell in love with a man soon to be a victim of the Holocaust––illuminates Ben’s...
In a Hotel Garden is a provocative work by the English novelist once described by Sir Frank Kermode as “an admirable and rare example of the writer...