I think John Irving and I are not meant to be. I have now read three of his books and that's enough... of course, The World According to Garp is on several "must read these before you die lists" so we're only on a break...
A Widow for One Year is going off my to-read pile, and into my give away box though, and I won't buy any more Irving books. After Garp, I'm done, and I'm not picking that one up any time soon.
The Hotel New Hampshire is about a family, two parents, and five children, who convert a school into a hotel in the 1950s. There is also a bear named State O'Maine. The first part of the book is mostly about the family history, the bear, and setting up the hotel. The children use the intercom system from the former school to spy on everyone in the hotel... Fairly interesting, and I was curious to see what direction the story would go.
The family decides to move to Austria and that's where the story and lack of plot lost me. Unfortunately, this was about 100-150 pages into a 400 page book. It just got weird, boring, and wandered around for the next 200 pages. I could skim entire pages and not miss a thing...
Supposedly, according to other reviews, the novel is humorous (I must have missed that part), brilliant (OK...) and totally John Irving (he really likes bears, short people (Owen Meany) naming characters after himself, and sex.
I gave the novel 2.5 stars because I finished it, but I was bored for most of the book. I couldn't tell you anything about the narrator/main character which is weird since this was a character driven novel except he needed to put down the bananas and he really loved his family...
I will [eventually] read The World According to Garp, but I'm not thrilled about it.
And that is my book review. Go ahead and pick this one up, so I have someone to talk to about the book... have you read any John Irving? Is he demented or a genius?
Thanks for reading!
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