Rating: 
Summary: Sorrow Floats; tears from laughing and crying
Review: One could say that the Hotel New Hampshire is like all the Irving books from the 70's and 80's because it has a lot of the same elements.
First of all there is the family that the rest of society will think is weird. In this case the Barry family consisting of one grandfather, two parents and 5 children, all with their own strange habits.
The grandfather is a football coach that coaches the team of a school in New Hampshire. They always have losing seasons except for the last season when they get some players that are waiting to go into college and are here to strengthen. One of them is the afwul quarterback Chipper Dove and the awesome running back Junior Jones. Iowa Bob (the coach) meets his end when he sees the taxidermed body of the old dog Sorrow (Irving is great with names).
Father Win Berry is a dreamer and always a person at the back of the story. He meets a bear-tamer from Austria named Freud and adores him. He starts a hotel (The First Hotel NH) with his wive. His wive is so pure that we don't hear a lot about her.
The children are Frank, John and Franny. Franny to me is the most important person. She gets raped by Chipper Dove and saved by Junior Jones but the rape remains a part of her and the family for their entire live. The younger children are Egg and Lilly, who will always remain small.
they sell the hotel in New Hampshire and move to Vienna to start the second hotel NH with Freud. On the way to Europe the plane carrying mother and Egg crashes. Rescue planes only see a stuffed dog floating in the water (Sorrow floats). They have to start life again and father loses yet another part of him. The hotel is full of left-wing radicals planning to blow up the Opera and prostitutes. There is also a woman in a bear suit called Susie, she was also raped.
A bombing goes awry because Freud uses a baseball bat to detonate the bomb, blinding father. Thanks to the money Lilly made for writing about the family they return to the US and go live in NY. After a while John and Susie move to Maine and start a rape center.
The typical Irving-elements are here again: great humor, great tragedy and great personalities. There are of course similarities with other books.
Size: Lilly and Owen Meany, a care-center in Garp, baseball in Owen Meany etc.
There is so much more I could tell about my favorite IRving book, how Junior Jones from the Black Arm of the Law in highschool saving Franny becomes a lawyer, etc. and how they finally pay back Chipper Dove for what he did. It's great reading which will make you cry: with laugher and with Sorrow
Rating:
Summary: Irving At His Finest
Review: I don't presume that this review will do justice to the masterpeice that is the Hotel New Hampshire. The best I can say is that I enjoyed this book immensely, it was rich with themes, it was tragic and absurd, it was full of wonderful characters and situations. If you are a fan of Owen Meany and Garp, you will like this book. This book is Irving at his creative best. Enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: disappointing
Review: After being very impressed with Owen Meaney, I am disappointed with Hotel New Hampshire. And the funny thing is, the same elements I loved about Owen Meaney are the reasons I barely finished Hotel. I get tired of the constant narrative foreshadowing - "it wasn't the last time Lilly would save us all," etc. Maybe it worked in Owen Meaney because there was a greater theme of fate/destiny, a terrible sense that we were moving toward the inevitable conclusion whether we want to or not. That theme is utterly missing in Hotel, and as a result, the foreshadowing is just annoying. I have a lot harder time buying some of the ridiculous elements in this story. I'm learning that making the ridiculous believable is a trademark of Irving's style, but, well, if I didn't believe it, then he didn't. A woman in a bear suit that people actually think is a bear? Have you ever seen a woman in a bear suit? It doesn't look anything like a bear. I get utterly sick of the heavy-handed "Sorrow floats" attempt at symbolism. It doesn't work for me at all. At all. And it seems like every time the narrative movement starts to slow down, the author kills someone off. How many people die in the course of 400 pages? The body count is in double-digits. At what point am I allowed to stop caring - or start expecting another death? This is an amateur author trick, one I won't let my students get away with. John Irving is a strong, talented writer, and I will keep reading his books, hoping to find more like Owen Meaney and less like this. He has a great gift for storytelling, if he can just keep it under control, and I think his forte is micro-scenes and logical folly. He writes good, lovable, warm characters (though he could stand to make them a bit more complex.) He flails around with symbolism and mysticism like a rookie writer in this book, but I am hoping that as he continues to write, he will wield that tool more deftly.
Rating: 
Summary: In Closing
Review: This is probably the last Irving book I'll review for a while because I've pretty much read them all until something new comes out. What I can tell you after reading 8 Irving novels, is that some are really good (Cider House Rules, World According to Garp), others are pretty bad (Prayer for Owen Meany, Fourth Hand), and still others are in between (Widow for One Year, Son of the Circus). Hotel New Hampshire I have to put in the third category of in between books. The best thing about the book is the cast of quirky characters essential to any Irving novel. The Berry family is a loving, oddball family of different personalities, which sometimes conflict, but for the most part work together in a sort of harmony as they grow up. The story follows their misadventures through three variations of the Hotel New Hampshire, one in the rundown town of Dairy, New Hampshire, one in Vienna, and the final one along the ocean in Maine. Like any Irving novel, you can see elements in past and future books. The way I think of it, Irving's books are all one house and for each novel, the author moves around the furniture a little bit so while it's the same house, it LOOKS slightly different to us readers. After eight novels, I'm used to the references to wrestling, prep schools, Vienna, and bears, though like anyone, I wish Irving would try to move beyond these elements sometimes. The main weakness of the book is the same as in Owen Meany, although not as pronounced. John the narrator is really a dull guy, who pretty much sits back and has things happen to him as opposed to going out and doing anything. As he says, he's the caretaker of the family, which also means he's not very interesting. However, he's not like John the narrator of the Owen Meany who's completely unlikeable. So, in closing, this is an enjoyable read and I recommend anyone who's liked some of Irving's other books take a look at this one. If you haven't read any other Irving novels, then I'd say to start with Cider House Rules and World According to Garp, then move on to Son of the Circus, Hotel New Hampshire, Widow for One Year, and Setting Free the Bears. Then at your own risk, try out Owen Meany and the Fourth Hand. And that, as Forrest Gump would say, is all I gotta say about that.
Rating:
Summary: Okay Read
Review: Definitely not his best work. Maybe I'll re-read it in a couple years and find something I've missed. A Prayer for Owen Meany and A Widow for One Year are my favorites. Try those on for size.
| 
