In a Hotel Garden

In a series of conversations that take place in his friends house in Putney Heath, Ben tells of a vacation to the Dolomites that signalled the end of his relationship with Sand, his girlfriend at the time, but opened up the possibility of a new one with the reserved, even somewhat remote, Liliane, or Lily. She had just been to Siena, looking for a garden in a hotel that was a significant place for her grandmother, a Jewish woman from Constantinople, who spent an ordinary day there, a day that became extraordinary because of the war and its effects on the family. To Lily that day in the hotel garden has become a way for her understand herself, her family, and the Holocaust. Constructed mostly from dialogue, the book presents multiple portraits of Ben, his friends, and the two women, along with a strong sense of the texture of their lives, while unfolding the story of Lily and her grandmother's day in the hotel garden.