I adore John Irving’s writing in this novel. This family drama features large and small moments quiet tragedies and devastating hurts and above all, love, strangeness, and connection. 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 Prayer for Owen Meany and Last Night in Twisted River. “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.

The one that probably struck the deepest chord with me, however, was The Hotel New Hampshire. I went through a John Irving phase during my college years and immediately thereafter, during which I read, pretty much sequentially, all of the author’s early works, including the more obscure Setting Free The Bears, The Water-Method Man, and The 158-Pound Marriage, as well as the extremely popular The World According To Garp. My pick for this week’s Flashback Friday: Other than that, the sky’s the limit! Join me, please, and let us all know: what are the books you’ve read that you always rave about? What books from your past do you wish EVERYONE would read? Pick something from five years ago, or go all the way back to the Canterbury Tales if you want.

Must have been originally published 5 or more years ago.

Has to still be available, preferably still in print.

Has to be something you’ve read yourself.

If you’d like to join in, here are the Flashback Friday book selection guidelines: As a reader, a blogger, and a consumer, I tend to focus on new, new, new… but what about the old favorites, the hidden gems? On Flashback Fridays, I want to hit the pause button for a moment and concentrate on older books that are deserving of attention.

It’s time, once again, for Flashback Friday…įlashback Friday is a chance to dig deep in the darkest nooks of our bookshelves and pull out the good stuff from way back.

The hotel new hampshire by john irving