The Hotel New Hampshire

19 hrs. 15 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author John Irving

Narrator Irina Yerisanova

Description

“New Hampshire” — a tragicomic saga by the famous author of “The World According to Garp” and “A Prayer for Owen Meany,” “The Rules of the Wine-Makers” and “The Fourth Hand.” A large-scale burlesque comparable in scope to Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five” or Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22.” You’ll find out what the common thread is between a motorcycle-riding bear and a labrador stuffed dummy, terrorism and pornography, American backwoods of the 1950s and Vienna of the 1960s — and a blind old man named Freud, wielding a baseball bat, will point you through the labyrinth of passions…

“Here’s how it was: one large family decided to buy the building of a former girls’ school and turn it into a hotel. Or else: once, at the hotel, two teenagers met — he fell in love with her… And there was also an old bear named State of Maine, who considered the sidecar motorcycle his home. Or yet another way: the family (the same large one, whose head had bought the State of Maine) received a letter from Vienna — from Freud (not that Freud!) — and decided to move to Austria to run the hotel there…

And this hotel is called ‘New Hampshire.’ Which one? Why, all three!

Once again John Irving masterfully braids together a single plot pattern from stories of the widest variety of colors. In this tragicomic novel, from funny to tragic — and in truth, it’s only one step: one step from a blind old man to a car rigged with explosives, or from a little writer to an open window. There’s no knockout, dynamic plot in ‘The Hotel,’ but the novel pulls you in from the very first page — and doesn’t let go until the very last.”