The Hotel New Hampshire
First edition
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| Author | John Irving |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Terry Fehr |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Romantic novel |
| Publisher | E. P. Dutton |
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Publication date
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1981 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 401 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | (first edition, hardback) |
| OCLC | 7306103 |
| 813/.54 19 | |
| LC Class | PS3559.R8 H6 1981 |
| Preceded by | The World According to Garp |
| Followed by | The Cider House Rules |
The Hotel New Hampshire is a 1981 coming of age novel by John Irving and his fifth published novel.
This novel is the story of the Berrys, a quirky New Hampshire family composed of a married couple, Win and Mary, and their five children. The parents, both from the small town of Dairy, New Hampshire, fall in love while working at a summer resort hotel in Maine as teenagers. There they meet a Viennese Jew named Freud who works at the resort as a handyman and entertainer, performing with his pet bear, State o' Maine; Freud comes to symbolize the magic of that summer for them. By summer's end the teens are engaged, and Win buys Freud's bear and motorcycle and travels the country performing to raise money to go to Harvard, which he subsequently attends while Mary starts their family. He then returns to Dairy and teaches at the local second-rate boys' prep school he attended, the Dairy School. But he is unsatisfied and dreaming of something better.
Brash, self-confident beauty Franny, is the object of her sibling John's adoration. John serves as the narrator, and is sweet, if naive. Frank is physically and socially awkward, reserved, and homosexual; he shares a friendship with his younger sister Lilly, a small, romantic girl who has "stopped growing". Egg, an immature little boy with a penchant for dressing up in costumes, is the baby of the family. John and Franny are companions, seeing themselves as the most normal of the children, aware that their family is rather strange. But, as John remarks, to themselves the family's oddness seems "right as rain."
Win conceives the idea of turning an abandoned girls' school into a hotel. He names it the Hotel New Hampshire and the family moves in. This becomes the first part of Irving's Dickensian-style tale. Key plot points include Franny's rape at the hands of quarterback Chipper Dove and several of his fellow football teammates. The actions and attitude of Chipper, with whom Franny is in love, are contrasted with those of her rescuer, Junior Jones, a black member of the team. The death of the family dog, Sorrow, provides dark comedy as he is repeatedly "resurrected" via taxidermy, literally scaring the family's grandfather to death at one point and foiling a sexual initiation of John's at another. John partakes in a continuing sexual/business relationship with the older hotel housekeeper, Ronda Ray, which ends when a letter arrives from Freud in Vienna, inviting the family to move to help him (and his new "smart" bear) run his hotel there.
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