The Hotel New Hampshire was published by E.P. Dutton in 1981, arriving on the wave of Irving’s enormous success with Garp. The novel follows the Berry family — father Win (who dreams of running the perfect hotel), mother Mary, and their five children — through catastrophes that would destroy any real family: rape, terrorism, bear attacks, blindness, suicide, and the disintegration of every venture they attempt.
Irving’s method is to subject his characters to the worst that life can offer — and then to show that love and humor and mutual support can survive even the worst. The Berry family motto — “Keep passing the open windows” (meaning: don’t jump) — captures the novel’s philosophy: life is terrible, and the proper response to its terribleness is not despair but endurance.
The three hotels — the first in New Hampshire (a converted girls’ school), the second in Vienna (populated by prostitutes, radicals, and performing bears), and the third back in Maine — represent stages in the family’s education: innocence (New Hampshire), experience (Vienna), and wisdom (Maine). The Vienna section is the novel’s darkest and most ambitious, immersing the Berrys in a world of political terrorism and sexual exploitation that tests their American optimism to its limits.
Collecting The Hotel New Hampshire
First edition (E.P. Dutton, New York, 1981): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in fine jacket: $40–$100
- Signed first edition: $100–$250
- Reading copy without jacket: $5–$15