SOURCE: “Defeatist Dialogues,” in Times Literary Supplement, March 5, 1993, p. 19.

In the following review, McCue offers a negative assessment of In a Hotel Garden, arguing that Josipovici fails to connect with his readers.

What feels like a crisis of choice may actually be a needless piece of worrying, and yet the truly important changes in our lives may happen without our caring, or even noticing. The life of feelings, just beyond our grasp, is but a dance around the life of actions.

Some such elusiveness is the subject of Gabriel Josipovici's new novella [In a Hotel Garden]. The writing is calm, polite, reserved—all those things one learns to be as one grows older and puts out of sight the wild feelings that few of us can handle. Here, statement follows statement: these things at least we can be sure of. “Francesca puts the food away methodically, the bread...