The Hotel New Hampshire

The Hotel New Hampshire is a 1981 coming of age novel by American writer John Irving, his fifth published novel. Plot 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, Frank, Franny, John, Lilly, and Egg. The parents, both from the small town of Dairy, New Hampshire (presumably based on Derry, New Hampshire), 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, State o' Maine; Freud comes to symbolize the magic of that summer for them. By summer's 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 he attended, the Dairy School. But he is unsatisfied and dreaming of something better. Brash, self-confident beauty Franny is the object of John's adoration. John serves as the narrator, and is sweet, if naive. Frank is physically and socially awkward, reserved, and homosexual; he shares a friendship with his younger sister, Lilly, a romantic young girl who has stopped physically growing. Egg is 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 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 the Dickensian-style tale. Key plot points include Franny's rape at the hands of quarterback Chipper Dove and several of his fellow football teammates. The actions and attitude of Chipper, with whom Franny is in love, are contrasted with those of her rescuer, Junior Jones, a black member of the team. The death of the family dog, Sorrow, provides dark comedy as he is repeatedly "resurrected" via taxidermy, first scaring Win's father, Iowa Bob, to death and then foiling a sexual initiation of John's.