The Hotel New Hampshire

The Hotel New Hampshire

Author:
Series: What to read when you feel like the world is falling apart
Length: 432 pages
ASIN: B0015QWXBC

Irving is known for writing big Dickensian novels; this is no exception. Irving pulls in some truly wacky plot elements: circus bears, taxidermy, weightlifting, and a run-down hotel. But at its heart this is the story of a messy, unusual family as they grow up and learn about love and death, success and failure, and (this being a John Irving novel) sex. Irving has a knack for distilling wisdom out of the strangest situations, and this exuberant novel gives him ample opportunity to exercise his talent.

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About the Book

Publisher’s Description:

“The first of my father’s illusions was that bears could survive the life lived by human beings, and the second was that human beings could survive a life led in hotels.”
So says John Berry, son of a hapless dreamer, brother to a cadre of eccentric siblings, and chronicler of the lives lived, the loves experienced, the deaths met, and the myriad strange and wonderful times encountered by the family Berry. Hoteliers, pet-bear owners, friends of Freud (the animal trainer and vaudevillian, that is), and playthings of mad fate, they “dream on” in a funny, sad, outrageous, and moving novel by the remarkable author of A Son of the Circus and A Prayer for Owen Meany.

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