Rating: 
Summary: A Cloyingly Thrice-Told Tale
Review: I love John Irving; popular fiction has a true voice in him. He is a sensitive author who really loves his characters and, more so, needs their story told. The Hotel New Hampshire is an absolute disaster. The problem here is too much preciousness; what with the incessant mentioning of Lilly's smallness, the constant rendering of all things bear-ish...ah, it's too much. John Irving has built a career on profound sameness: every book is a cookie cutter pattern of the preceding book and, although this is something his fans will defend (and for good reason as the telling of the story is all that really matters) I take issue with this particular book's internal repetition. There are maybe four or five themes within the book that are constantly being driven, driven, driven until, and I say this as gently as I can, the book becomes extremely irritating. Irritating: the story, the characters, everything here is like a persistant tap on the forehead for days. The problem is not in the craft or in the content; the problem is that enough is enough after only a few chapters and, sadly, Mr. Irving doesn't feel as such for four hundred pages. Whatever. The rest of his major works are readable enough.
Rating: 
Summary: The hotel is ok...
Review: This is my first review, ever. First, I recommend reading The World According to Garp instead of The Hotel New Hampshire. In "The Hotel" there are few obvious weaknesses. First, too many cliched sentences and bad metaphors that have been used a lot, already. The sentences aren't as tight as they are in Garp. Second, the characters are less believable. This is definitely true after an important death (I don't want to give away anything to readers who haven't read this yet). And also, the book is much more predictable than Garp was. Iriving surprised me in Garp with his originality and very good writing. Each sentence was well crafted. The Hotel fails on these accounts, although the characters are fairly well developed. Last, the book drags on. Near the end, I felt enough already, but with Garp, when it ended, I wanted to read more. Writers who are original, across all disciplines, stand out. Pablo Neruda, Bob Solow, Fred Jameson, Thomas Pynchon, John Nash and Slojov Zizek are those who keep it new.
Rating: 
Summary: VIENNA AND FREUD AND BEARS, "OH, MY"
Review: I seriously don't think that John Irving is capable of telling a bad story. There are storytellers and then there are "storytellers." Irving is in that elevated category making each reading experience a memorable one. Right off the bat, you feel familiar with Irving's trademark themes. No story is complete without either a visit from a bear, a trip to Vienna or a romp with a prostitute. All these things might sound weird but Irving makes them seem so conventional.Irving takes dysfunction and makes it seem normal. He talks about prostitutes yet it doesn't sound seedy. He gives life to a bear and makes the reader wish that perhaps they could have a bear for a pet. He just makes "pure idiocy sound logical." The Hotel New Hampshire is the story of the Berry family living different stages of their lives at different hotels they manage to own. The love of hotel life first manifests itself when Win Berry meets Mary Bates at the Arbuthnot-by-the-Sea in Maine during a summer job in 1939. A series of events will find the Berrys opening up their first hotel in New Hampshire where they will attempt to raise their family which includes five children, a dog named Sorrow and a bear named Earl. This is a family led by Win Berry, a true dreamer. As Irving, or should I say Freud, says, "A dream is a disguised fulfillment of a suppressed wish." In all, the family will fulfill the father's dream by establishing three separate Hotel New Hampshires with the one in Vienna being perhaps the turning point in all their lives. It is here that Irving makes a great statement about terrorists -- one I'd like to repeat as it seems so poignant today, twenty years after he wrote it..."The terrorist pretends he is uninterested in the means. The ends, they say, are what they care about. But they are lying. The means is everything to them. The blast of the bomb, the blood -- they love it all. Their intellectual detachment is a fraud; their indifference is feigned. They tell lies about having higher purposes." This is an amazing look at an eccentric family made considerably more normal by Irving's words. They will experience life at its fullest while sharing their own measure of sadness as different family members pass on. Irving chooses to pass over these events more swiftly preferring to focus more on the life of the characters as opposed to the deaths because that's what Irving does...he writes about living life -- not about dying death. When I think back over the years on some of the "characters" that I've read about and remembered like they were friends, it's Irving's characters who always seem to be at the top of the list...T.S. Garp, Owen Meany, Homer. This is the sign of a truly good book -- a book where the characters will last a lifetime in my fictional world. I have now added the entire Berry family to this list proving, once again, that Irving is a great "creator" of everlasting characters.
Rating:
Summary: John Irving's Best!
Review: In my opinion, this IS John Irving's best. Once you think you know John Irving's method and form, read A Widow for One Year.
Rating:
Summary: The Second Rate Hotel New Hampshire
Review: I consider myself lucky. OWEN MEANY was the first Irving book that I read. It just happened to be the one on the shelf at the library at the time. If I had picked up any other of Irving's books first, I doubt I would have gotten very far with them and I doubt that I would have read another book of his. But I thought OWEN MEANY was a great book, and it allowed me to give Irving the benefit of the doubt when the going got rough in some of his other books. THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE is not a great book, but it is a fairly good one. While there's a lot about Irving that I don't care for and some things that I can barely stomach (you know what I'm talking about), I like his technique. He has a way of decorating his stories with all sorts of colorful details and reoccuring motifs. Some of these, like the evolution of the "bear", are truly brillant, while others, like "passing the open windows" and "sorrow floats" are so tedious and redudant, its an effort to keep my dinner from coming up. I liked a lot of the characters in the book, but I felt that more could have been done with them, and I thought that many of the things they do are so far removed from any sort of "normal" behavior that their credibility is strained almost to the breaking point. Also, I agree with many of the reviewers, that there is something sort of creepy about the ease with which these characters deal with the death of their "loved ones". No one seems to shed a tear. I remember noticing this same sort of thing in OWEN MEANY when Jonny Wheelwright lost his mother. He really didn't seem to upset about it. But at the time I wrote this off as a "unreliable narrator" syndrome. Since Jonny was telling the story, maybe he didn't feel comfortable discussing his grief. But here, it just seems creepy. How can a family be close and yet be so blase' when two members crash into the ocean? I think there is a connection here with the incest in the story. A real son would cry for his mother and a real brother wouldn't lust after his sister. It seems like these people are close but yet the true bonds of family are somehow absent. Maybe that's the point. With Irving it's hard to tell exactly what his intentions are. How does HE feel about the Berry family? Is he repulsed by them or does he think they're wonderful? Does he condone what John and Franny do? It's hard to say. John Irving is a good writer, but I think he's got some real problems. By the way, its a shame that...doesn't carry the full size paperback version of this and other John Irving books. They have some great illustrations on the covers. I especially liked the cover of this book, which depicted the Indian motorcycle sitting in an autumn field.
Rating:
Summary: Great!
Review: My friend told me not to read this book, due to the actual morality of it. I did anyway (and watched the movie), and I thought it was the best john irving book that I've read. I've only actually read three of his books ("cider house" and "owen meany"), and this one is really good, despite what some people might say. It has a really good story behind it and the characters are very complex and interesting to read about. I definitely recommend this book for the good story it has behind it.
Rating:
Summary: Irving's best!!
Review: I am a huge John Irving fan, have read every one of his novels, and have to say that this is unquestionably his best. Not only have I read it a half dozen times at least, but I've given away at least that many copies. And everyone I've given it to has come back with the highest praise - one friend read it and started right over with page 1 immediately after finishing it!! If you love to read, or even if you're someone who only reads occasionally, don't pass this book up. It's fantastic on so many levels.
Rating: 
Summary: In Love With Irving
Review: Although I still consider A Prayer For Owen Meany his greatest book, John Irving was extremely entertaining in The Hotel New Hampshire. He seems to have an obsession with bears, but they make for humorous reading. Mr. Irving has a way of making the most bizarre events quite believable. I think he is one of the most extraordinary writers of our time. He has a unique sense of humor. After reading each of his books, I always wish I knew him so that I could call him to discuss the book. Enjoyable reading!
Rating:
Summary: One of the Greatest
Review: John Irving's "Hotel New Hampshire" has to be one of the best books that I have ever read. The first John Irving book that I had ever read, it made me laugh out loud many times throughout. The depth that he goes into with the character is incredible. He makes you get very attached to the characters, especially little Lilly. This book I would recommend to anyone. I got all my friends to read it and they loved it to. I book that I will definitely read over and over again.
Rating:
Summary: Good story - strange relationship
Review: I liked this book although I only gave it 3 stars. What I didn't like was the relationship between the brother and sister. Mr. Irving has a strange slant on life if you have read any of his books but it makes for interesting reading.
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