Hardcover, 572 pages

German language

Published Aug. 24, 2004 by Süddeutsche Zeitung GmbH.

ISBN:
978-3-937793-09-2
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(34 reviews)

"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. "Like Garp, [THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE] is a startlingly original family saga that combines macabre humor with Dickensian sentiment and outrage at cruelty, dogmatism and injustice." --Time "Rejoice! John Irving has written another book …

9 editions

Review of 'The Hotel New Hampshire' on 'Goodreads'

In light of the tragedy which occurred while we were on vacation and out of the news loop, it seems a creepy coincidence that I was reading The Hotel New Hampshire, by John Irving. In this novel, the Berry family adopts the catch phrase, "keep passing the open windows" as a reminder to each other to chin up, stay positive, and keep going. Unfortunately, one of these family members, the writer Lily, will succumb to an open window. (David Foster Wallace would have stated that she defenestrated herself, and he certainly taught us the word anhedonia, or the inability to experience joy.)


As I would say of all of Irving's books, this one is brilliant, surreal, complicated, and sometimes hilariously funny. It's quite something, how Irving can do that, can make the reader go along with such bizarre story lines, all the while staying glued to the pages. This is …

Review of 'The Hotel New Hampshire' on 'Goodreads'

This book, when I first read it, was the right book at the right time; I needed these ideas, characters and story lines. Never having a real and whole family of my own, this family showed me the possible ways that members of a (loving) family might react to a variety of situations.

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