'Literate, Ingenious and Original'
Anthony Burgess, Observer

Quirky, bizarre, tragic, fiendishly funny, The Hotel New Hampshire is anything but a conventional family saga, though a family saga it certainly is. The Berry family are different. Love abounds - both healthy and incestuous. It is the overwhelming desire of the Berry father to run a hotel, which he does, with dubious success, in both a former girls' school in New Hampshire, and in Vienna.

It is the Berry children who grab the readers' attention, sympathies and love - all five of them: Frank (the eldest), Franny (the weirdest), John (the narrator), Lily (the writer) and Egg (the youngest). When Irving, or rather John, writes 'Frank's queer, Franny's weird, Lily's small and Egg is Egg' the initiated reader can do no other than shout a deafening 'yes, I know what you mean!'

From there on, the reader is held spellbound as the family Labrador, Sorrow, is first stuffed then becomes the cruel victim of a plane crash; and, as John and Franny realise their incestuous desires.

Stunningly readable, mercilessly involving, The Hotel New Hampshire is peopled with characters - and bears - that you'll never forget.

'Irving is the wisest, most anguished and funniest novelist of his generation and The Hotel New Hampshire is his best work'
Chicago Sun-Times

'A hectic gaudy saga with the verve of a Marx Brothers movie'
New York Times Book Review

 
I love the movie starring Rob Lowe and Jodie Foster, and I've been wanting to read the book for a long while but my old copy was falling apart and barely readable. I hadn't realised till I bought a stack of eight John Irving books, specifically for The Prayer of Owen Meany for the BBC Big Read, that it was the same guy. It seems that John Irving has been incredibly busy, writing all kinds of funny, quirky and imaginative books without my noticing. I only hope I really love his writing style now, because his books sound incredible.