The Hotel New Hampshire

"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 Widow for One Year and The Cider House Rules.



"A hectic gaudy saga with the verve of a Marx Brothers movie."
-The New York Times Book Review

"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 according to your world. . . . You must read this book."
-Los Angeles Times

"Spellbinding . . . Intensely human . . . A high-wire act of dazzling virtuosity."
-Cosmopolitan