The Hotel New Hampshire

infobox Book |
name = The Hotel New Hampshire
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = First edition
author = John Irving
cover_artist = Terry Fehr
country = United States
language = English
series =
genre = Romantic novel
publisher = E. P. Dutton
release_date = 1981
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 401 pp (first edition, hardback)
isbn = ISBN 0-525-12800-X (first edition, hardback)
preceded_by = The World According to Garp
followed_by = The Cider House Rules

"The Hotel New Hampshire" is a 1981 coming of age novel by John Irving.

Plot summary

This novel is the story of the Berrys, a quirky New Hampshire family composed of a married couple, Win and Mary, and their five children. The parents, both from the small town of Dairy, fall in love while working at a summer resort hotel in Maine as teenagers. There they meet a Viennese Jew named Freud who works at the resort as a handyman and entertainer, performing with his pet bear; Freud comes to symbolize the magic of that summer for them. By its end the teens are engaged, and Win buys Freud's bear and motorcycle and travels the country performing to raise money to go to Harvard, which he subsequently attends while Mary starts their family. He then returns to Dairy and teaches at the local second-rate boys' prep school. But he is unsatisfied and dreaming of something better.

The children are Franny, who is self-confident and brash, John, the narrator, who is sweet and close (perhaps a bit too close) to his sister, and Frank, who is physically awkward and homosexual; Lily, a small girl who has "stopped growing", and Egg, an immature little boy with a penchant for dressing up in costumes. John and Franny are companions, seeing themselves as the most normal of the children, aware that their family is rather strange. But, as John remarks, to themselves the family's oddness seems "right as rain."

Win conceives the idea of turning an abandoned girls school into a hotel. He names it the Hotel New Hampshire and the family moves in. This becomes the first part of Irving's Dickensian-style tale. Its chief plot elements are: Franny's rape at the hands of several members of the school football team, including the quarterback, a boy named Chipper Dove with whom she is in love, and her rescue, though somewhat late, by Junior Jones, a black member of the team; the death of the family dog Sorrow and its repeated resurrection via taxidermy, the first instance of which scares the grandfather literally to death; John's sexual initiation with the hotel housekeeper, and a letter from Freud inviting the family to move to Vienna to help him (and his new "smart" bear) run his hotel there.

Travelling separately, the mother and Egg are killed in an airplane crash. The others take up life in Vienna at what is renamed the (second) Hotel New Hampshire, one floor of the which is occupied by prostitutes and another by a group of radical communists. The family discover that Freud is now blind and the "smart bear" is actually a girl in a bear suit named Susie. Plot developments in this segment are: the father's decline following the death of his wife; the family's relationships with the prostitutes and the radicals; John and Franny falling in love with each other; John's relationship with a communist who commits suicide; Franny's sexual relationships with Susie and with the "quarterback" of the radicals; Lily developing as a writer and penning the story of the family; and the radicals' plot to blow up the opera house, using Freud and the family as hostages, which Freud and Win Berry foil. The family becomes famous and, with Frank as Lily's agent, her book is published for a large amount of money. The family (with Susie the bear) returns to the States, taking up residence in a large hotel in New York.

The chief elements of the final part of the novel are: Franny and John's resolution of their love; Franny's revenge on her rapist; Franny's success as a movie actress and her marriage to Junior Jones; Lily's suicide from her despair as a writer; John's and Frank's purchase of the shut-down resort in Maine where their parents met; its function as a rape crisis center run by Susie; Susie and John finding happiness with each other, and a pregnant Franny asking them to raise her and Junior's impending baby.

The novel is evocative of the New Hampshire of Irving's childhood.

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

The novel was made into a film in 1984, directed by Tony Richardson and starring Jodie Foster, Rob Lowe, and Beau Bridges. A very young Seth Green plays Egg.