The Autumn Garden

We’re very used to hearing about the vicissitudes of youth and love. They’re constantly examined and why shouldn’t they be? — that pulse, that energy fills us for so many years. It’s fascinating then that Hellman, in The Autumn Garden, examines what happens when passions, assumed to be abated, are unexpectedly re-ignited.

An old flame visits a group of friends all struggling with their aging demons, and, like the southern Louisiana climate in which this story is set, the heat of those feelings ignites and boils over. And then… what’s left is a sense of opportunities missed, secrets that should not have been shared, fragments of vaguely remembered desires, and the end of summer.