The Hotel New Hampshire (Black Swan)

John Irving loves Charles Dickens and often is compared to Charles Dickens. But Dickens, sloppy as his writing could be, knew how to craft real characters and a real plot. Irving crafts interesting trash, each bag of which resembles the last bag of trash he crafted.

If you are only going to read one Irving novel -and you need read only one- it should be "The Hotel New Hampshire." While "The World According to Garp" is Irving's best book, THNH combines all of John Irving's faults into one reliably stupid page-turner:
-Quirky paper-thin characters with humorous names? Check.
-Recycled themes and settings? Check.
-Quaint nicknames or traditions rooted in elaborate local legends? Check.
-Sexual deviance thrown in for shock value? Check.
-A conveniently fatal accident to jumpstart a stalled plot? Check.
-More colons and semicolons than a Tijuana protologist's office? Check.

Did you ever see any of those European movies that take place in a Scottish or Irish or Italian village full of loveable oddballs - or the American TV shows "Northern Exposure" or "Gilmore Girls"? THNH is just like those, if Gordon Urquhart got run over by a bus and Lorelei Gilmore seduced her best friend's Doberman.

Then again, I read it all the way through to the end, didn't I?

I read The Hotel New Hampshire many years ago and loved it. My review is really a comment and a plea to the publishers of Irving's works.

Please publish this book and all of Irving's early stuff on Kindle!

I mean, what's the deal?

John Irving might be one of the most self-involved writers of the late 20th century. His novels are clearly and foremost about HIM. His protagonists are so dry, they seem to populate the pages for no reason other than for someone to do the speaking on Mr. Irving's behalf. The best way to sum up Mr. Irving's writing style: good storyteller, but lousy prose writer--and way too full of himself. His novels are rarely about anything. Stuff happens for no good reason, mostly for shock value. I enjoyed "Garp" although I had to plod through the redundant prose and endless string of happenings that never add up. It was like perusing a family photo album. "Hotel New Hampshire" is much the same, but it lacks "Garp's" quaintness and likability. "Hotel New Hampshire" is all the bad aspects of a John Irving novel WITHOUT any characters to cheer for. I understand that contemporary writers like to pepper their novels with incest and inter-generational sex (as an avid reader I've learned to muddle through those scenes) but these days I seem to be hitting seas of it. Page after page of brother-sister sex; brother-brother sex; mother-son sex; father-daughter sex...... John Irving is like Ann Rice without the purple prose. Goodness, it takes a lot to get through contemporary novels these days. I simply have run out of the ability to overlook certain issues. I devoured "Garp," but "Hotel New Hampshire" was the first novel I picked up that I failed to finish. I simply didn't care for the obnoxious movie star female protagonist and her on-going sexual relationship with her dimwitted brother. The only character I liked was the sexually ambiguous black sheep in the family, and he disappears midway through the novel. I do not recommend this novel.

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.

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.

Those readers with the stomach to wade through all the pathos of this decades spanning tale will be rewarded with a rich reading experience. For those who wimp out, you don't know what you are missing.

As a native of New Hampshire, the descriptions of the areas of New England were wonderful to read. His flare the the unusual is beautifully expressed. His characters come alive and although they are some strange characters, you can still relate to them and feel for all of them. If you are looking for something different and for a novel which you will not forget, you must read this book.

Irving's HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE may very well be his most disappointing novel. His keen sense of the absurd displayed in THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP and A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY is absent here. The characters are so bizarre that they border on self-parody. They are flatly drawn and one dimensional. The book felt like a novel version of one of T.S. Garp's second rate short stories.

As a native of New Hampshire, the descriptions of the areas of New England were wonderful to read. His flare the the unusual is beautifully expressed. His characters come alive and although they are some strange characters, you can still relate to them and feel for all of them. If you are looking for something different and for a novel which you will not forget, you must read this book.

Irving's HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE may very well be his most disappointing novel. His keen sense of the absurd displayed in THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP and A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY is absent here. The characters are so bizarre that they border on self-parody. They are flatly drawn and one dimensional. The book felt like a novel version of one of T.S. Garp's second rate short stories.

This is now possibly one of my favourite books ever along with Great Expectations and Captain Corelli's Mandolin. It is incredibly funny, gripping, touching and imaginative. Go read this book now and you won't be disappointed. (Don't read it in too public a place though because people will start giving you funny looks when you start laughing out loud!)

Having read and loved "Omen Meany," "Garp," "Son of the Circus," and "Cider House Rules," I was shocked and disappointed by this, John Irnving's most lurid, contrived, and depressing novel. The plots were implausible, the characters thinly realized, the themes repulsive and uncomfortable, and the point of the book entirely elusive. Every great writer is entitled a lemon, and this is certainly Irving's Edsel. Skip it and stick to the others, lest you momentarily lose faith in one of America's greatest contemporary novelists.

Este es uno de los mejores libros de John Irving. Yo lo considero a el uno de los mejores escritores contemporaneos norteamericanos. La historia de esta familia es triste, comica, y increiblemente adictiva. Yo le recomiendo esto libro a todos mis amigos, y pare ser honesta yo siempre recomiendo todo lo que este escritor escribe.

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.