John Irving packs so much into his novels that you wonder how he keeps them coming. The
Hotel New Hampshire contains themes
familiar to Irving fans - bears, for example - but takes the human need to explore and try new things to a level not seen before in his work.
Told by one of the children of the family at the centre of the book, but in a remarkable mix of present day and retrospect, it ranges across all the values and feelings of family life - love, tragedy, humour - set amongst a story of a passionate and respectable man driven to set up and run a hotel.
Starting in a old
school in Dairy, New Hampshire, the story moves on quickly to Europe and beyond, in each case Irving painting a perfect picture of the location. New England is as we all imagine New England to be; Berlin with its Germanic order and underlying tensions.
As with other Irving novels, we are introduced to a number of memorable characters, including Iowa Bob (also
known as Coach Bob), Sorrow the dog, Egg, Franny, Old Billig, Freud and the bear known as State o'' Maine. He also cleverly weaves in a large cast of supporting characters who, while not having huge parts to play, are central to the events that unfold.
The scenes he constructs - the children listening to the guests at the first Hotel New Hampshire through the intercom system left behind in the old school, or the prostitutes filing up the stairs of the second hotel in the evening, while the radicals filed down - create a vivid image for the reader within which the the family''s extraordinary - but also normal - behaviour can be told without literary pyrotechnics.
As the novel concludes, you reflect at the breathtaking scope of material about the human condition Irving has managed to include, while simpy telling the story of a family who''s father just wanted to own a hotel.