In a Hotel Garden [Paperback]

Gabriel Joaipovici (Author), Gabriel Josipovici (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1995

"In a Hotel Garden" is the strangest and most enigmatic of Gabriel Josipovici's many strange, enigmatic novels. On the surface it is a simple story of the growing obsession young Englishman with a Jewish woman he meets on holiday. Gradually it reveals itself as an exploration of power of memory and imagination, also raising vividly the question of how far it is possible for non-Jews to understand Jews, however intrigued by them they may be. In a haunting play of echoes the novel presents us not with hotel garden but two, embedded respectively in the stony landscape of Tuscany and in the forested mountains of Alto Adige; not one story of erotic obsession but two, played out in Italy in the 1920s, the other in present-day London. A great walk over a mountain in the Dolomites forms the mysterious centre of this book. Behind the story looms our dilemma of coming to terms with the destruction of European Jews.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

While it may be more accessible than others of Josipovici's novels (The Inventory, Words, The Echo Chamber), In a Hotel Garden is not more enjoyable. There's nothing to sink your teeth into: the story's aimless; the characters, caricatured; the images, indistinct and fleeting. In contemporary Putney Heath, Ben is the perpetual odd man out, hanging around the kitchen of his friends Rick and Fran. While walking the dog or helping to prepare salads, Ben recalls a vacation to the Dolomites that probably doomed his relationship with Sand, his girlfriend at the time, but it opened up the possibility of a new one with tediously vague Liliane. ``Lily'' has just been to Siena looking for a garden that had some import to her grandmother, a Jewish woman from Constantinople, and that Lily has invested with the power to make her understand herself and the Holocaust. It's a lot to pin on a garden. It's also more than this novel can bear. Josipovici works mostly with dialogue; and while interruptions, cross-purposes, daily disposable chatter, verbal tics and the like lend verisimilitude onstage, they're like iced molasses on this narrative.

Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 148 pages
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation (May 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811212912
• ISBN-13: 978-0811212915
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,002,961 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Unless it's required reading...Don't!, September 26, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: In a Hotel Garden (Paperback)

I had to read this exercise in futility for a class. It started off badly and I thought if I had to read one more "Ben SAYS" or "Rick SAYS" that I would have to drown the book in the bathtub where I was reading. I'd have rather tried to sort through the indistinguishable voices of Ben and Rick than keep reading the word "says". I was so annoyed that I really didn't care which boring person was talking. All we have to go on is what the people say to each other. We're not in anyone's head, and there is no internal dialog, which makes the characters flat and half-formed.

The back of the book informs us that Ben's encounter with this woman, and her grandmother's story "illuminates Ben's half-lived life". It seems to me that for both Ben and Lily,possibilities are far more interesting than reality. Too bad that the possibility of the book was not borne out in the reality of the reading. Too bad Josipovici only manages to half illuminate the reader.