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“It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.”If you have read John Irving before you know his work is bizarre, too tidy (usually) and not realistic, and if you can get over that aspect then you have a chance of enjoying his work. He is hit or miss for me. I have read a couple of his I enjoyed, and a few I have loathed. I have noticed that those I dislike are ones he has written in the last 20 years.“The Hotel New Hampshire” has all the usual Irving characteristics; a story that ta...
I winced, cringed, and rolled my eyes through this. The only other Irving I'd read was Garp and I absolutely adored it...until about the last third. The spell Irving had woven over me wore off and the book started to grate; this one wore out its welcome in the first hundred pages. I can't stand the precious little phrases the characters use constantly throughout the book (what?, open windows, 464, blah, blah, blah) and the motifs from the author's other works (bears, athletic obsession, lust, ca...
This novel, the first one I ever read of Irving, left a very ambiguous mark on my soul. I was strongly attracted to the really powerful story telling, which reminded my of Dickens. As with Dickens, there was also the intens and warm interaction between the main characters (almost all of them members of one family) and the sometimes dramatic events they have to confront. But Irving really is modern writer: the unconventional relations between the family members, the risky cross-border themes (rap...
(This was the first book of my new book club).John Irving is one of America’s great writers. Happy Days was one of America’s most popular television shows. (Don’t worry this will make sense later)Happy Days was beloved, but everyone knows there was one episode where everything seems to start to go downhill for Fonzie and the kids; it was the episode where Fonzie drove his motorcycle over a ramp and jumped a shark. Now the phrase “jumped the shark” is utilized for that point whenever anything goe...
Win(slow) Berry is a dreamer never satisfied with life, as it is. Always wanting to climb over the hill to see what's on the other side. It will always be better over there! An unhappy childhood with only one parent to raise him, a physical fitness fanatic rather cold but a good man... The single father Bob (Coach Bob) his wife having died, giving birth to Win. The dedicated football coach at the prep school in Dairy, New Hampshire called unimaginatively, the Dairy School. A second rate institu...
A COVID-ERA MEDITATION: BEGUN IN FEB 2020...It’s been forty years since I read this book. It put me on a course that would take me thru almost the entire then-extant Irving opus, back in those depressing doldrums they called the eighties.So Irving’s offbeat book helped this offbeat guy, through its deification of Murphy’s Law to a murky hilarity that totally reflected my thirtysomething life (and yes, in the evenings I watched the classic Thirtysomething TV series, so go figure how down I was).....
"So we dream on. Thus we invent our lives. We give ourselves a sainted mother, we make our father a hero; and someone's older brother, and someone's older sister - they become our heroes, too. We invent what we love, and what we fear. There is always a brave, lost brother - and a little lost sister, too. We dream on and on; the best hotel, the perfect family, the resort life. And our dreams escape us almost as vividly as we can imagine them."I have started writing this review four, five times? I...
One of my most revelatory professional discoveries is also stupidly simple. It’s this, courtesy of Bob Probst: Reading is a selfish venture.It is. Of course it is. I’m disappointed in myself for not realizing it earlier, because it’s a principle – probably one of the top two or three – that guides my work with pre-service English teachers, and it would’ve transformed the way I taught English in high school. I was reminded of the selfishness of the reading enterprise as I made my way through John...
Awesome book. I had never read Irving before, and I have no idea why not. He's like that Deli that you always drive by but never go into, then one day decide "what the hell" and it turns out to have the best pastrami sandwich you've ever had in your life. Anyway, the story revolves around an unusual family growing up and learning about sex, sports, love, death, failure, success, etc etc. It's quirky and funny and strange - Irving has a knack for finding little bits of truth in truly bizarre situ...
If you haven't read Irving yet, I think you should give him a try. This novel isn't one of his "big three", but it's damn good.First off, most Irving novels have some general characteristics: - They typically have a Dickensian plot, in which you follow the characters through large portions of their lives. The breadth of the novel typically goes through one generational span, but often you'll get (at least) a few beginning chapters detailing the lives of the protagonist's parents or grandparents,...
There's something a tad demented about this one. I'll pass.
I learned never to read John Irving ever again. I'd like to give this even less than one star, if there were a way.
I've never much liked fancy dress. I've never been very good at it, either. It's my mum's fault, really. Every Halloween when I was a child, my mum would throw a black bin liner over me, colour in my nose with her mascara, and attach a sock she’d stuffed with newspapers to my bottom, before declaring my costume complete. Even at seven, I was aware of how ridiculous I looked. Sometimes I decided to throw on some additional make-up or attach a couple of ears to my head just to avoid confusion, but...
The Hotel New Hampshire: John Irving's Fairy Tale of Life "A dream is fulfillment of a wish."--The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund FreudOne of the benefits of having your favorite professor of psychology as your next door neighbor is learning that he is a very widely read man. We are an odd pair, I suppose. He is 76. I am 59. But through the years we have known one another we have become best friends. We frequently exchange books the other has not read.It is safe to say that Howard is fon...
The bear knows this, too: it is hard work and great art to make life not so serious. Prostitutes know this too. John Irving is trying to write the perfect novel. Every time he finishes one book, he looks back and frowns: still not good enough! So he goes back to the planning board and starts anew. We, as readers, should be grateful for his determination and for his integrity towards his art. Even as he reuses favourite themes, imagery and type of characters, Irving remains true to his vision of
Now I have read four books by John Irving and none as been over 3 stars. Not a bad writer but his books just don't work for me. This was a bit strange at times but it didn't work either. Didn't get the humour,invested in the characters or plot. Will probably not pick something else up by him if I'm not suffering from memoryless one day at a secondhand store
Irving is a great storyteller and novelist with characters that come to life in being all but flawless and also by taking views and actions that are unexpected, very much like in life. He also has a few strange interests, such as bears, wrestling and much more and a few of them are in evidence in this one as well. 'Hampshire' is good, but not one of his best, mostly due to it being quite the bumpy ride, parts are amazing and some parts are easily missed. I would start with another one of his.
The Hotel New Hampshire is book five in my John Irving Challenge, wherein I am attempting to read all of John Irving's novels in under a year's time. On with the review.Incest is the best! Oof. Just typing that made my stomach flip. Incest is one of my only triggers. That and the death of very young children, kids between zero and five, their deaths just fucking wreck me, man. Incest just makes me feel ill. It's a core reaction. Not sure where the aversion stems from, if it's natural or learned,...
This is one of my favorite books of all time, and is-for what it's worth-my favorite John Irving book in a world where everyone else picks The World According to Garp. It's the perfect blend of sad and sweet and strange, a combination that is quite difficult to pull off. Irving himself doesn't always manage that trifecta successfully in his other works. The story is about the travails (and boy, are there travails) of the Berry family of New Hampshire, in running the titular hotel and what follow...
To describe the plotline of The Hotel New Hampshire to a questioning would-be reader is to realize that you’ve been enthralled with a plot that is, at its core, rather silly. Circus bears and run-down hotels, plane crashes (so silly!) and midgets, botched taxidermy and obsessive weight-lifting – these are what Irving novels are made of. This was an undeniably fun read that I sped through, and I picked up another Irving (A Widow for One Year) as soon as I was done (I just can’t get enough). It wi...