THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE is far and away the quirkiest of John Irving's novels. The Berry family raises the bar on dysfunction to dizzying heights, featuring characters each of whom stand alone in their memorable kinks: The detached Father, oblivious to the antics and pain of his offspring; Mother, who floats on the edges of her family's lives; the children, Frank, Franny, John, and later, Lilly and Egg; Sorrow the dog, and the bear on the motorcycle. Family friends, Freud, Iowa Bob and Suzie the Bear --- a human so ashamed of her appearance that she walks about in a bear suit --- all become a part of the extended family in strange and wonderful ways.

The narrator, middle child John, tells the story of the family as they try to live a normal life in hotels on two different continents. At once heart breaking and hilarious, THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE works as a novel simply because John Irving breathes life into these diverse characters without making them hokey, maudlin or pathetic. Written three years after the best-selling THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP, most readers, whether they liked the book or not, came away convinced that here was a serious novelist at work, possessed with a wondrous imagination and gift for storytelling.

Like the prior novel, GARP, HOTEL was made into a Hollywood movie. Irving liked HOTEL better than he liked GARP, contrary to most of the moviegoers. He discusses the transition of book to movie in MY MOVIE BUSINESS.

As in most Irving novels, the plot of HOTEL is complex and multilayered, sprinkled liberally with flashback. Irving demands much of his readers, wielding words like weapons, layering plot upon plot in a massive, festive concoction of fantasy, pathos and humor.

   --- Reviewed by Roz Shea

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