Summary

In the first part of Chapter 3, the author describes her return to the Hotel Barba in 2011, in the midst of what she describes as the end of her marriage to a man named Philip. He, she says, was a good man, but more of a father than a husband to her. She describes how she and Philip found the place relatively easily, even after being away for so many years, but adds that it had been changed and renovated into a hotel. Still, she says, she was able to find familiar rooms and other places, her recollections leading her to contemplations of how the stories of the people there had found their way into her fiction writing.

The author then contemplates the importance of how stories can offer meaning, and of how memories often reform themselves into stories that may have greater or...