The Hotel New Hampshire

is a 1981 novel by John Irving. It tells the story of the Berrys, an eccentric family, as they attempt to run a series of hotels.

It could be said to be Irving's most typical novel; That Other Wiki has a chart of all the recurring motifs in Irving's fiction (bears, prostitution, the city of Vienna, and so on) and The Hotel New Hampshire is the only one of his books that contains all of them.

It was made into a film in 1984, starring Jodie Foster, Beau Bridges, Rob Lowe, Nastassja Kinski and Wilford Brimley.

• Arc Words: "Keep passing the open windows."
• Bears are Bad News: Bears real (State o'Maine), costumed (Susie) and metaphorical pervade the book.
• Bi the Way: Franny and Susie have a sexual relationship for what appears to be at least several months. What makes it this trope and not Les Yay is that both come out the other side with heterosexual love interests: in Franny's case her exploration of lesbianism is implied to be a reaction/response to her rape and once she works through it she and Junior Jones become a long-term couple; Susie starts off identifying as lesbian only to acknowledge her attraction to John years later, and they become a long-term couple as well.
• Broken Bird: Both Franny and Susie.
• Brother-Sister Incest: John and Franny, in a rare case where it doesn't end badly. It also isn't played for titillation value, either -- their years-long attraction to each other is perceived by both as a disaster waiting to happen, which they finally avert by burning through the attraction in a marathon of sex deliberately pushed past the point where neither wants to continue, until they basically come out the other side no longer desiring each other. Sadly, The Movie plays this scene for laughs.
• Coming of Age Story: For John and his siblings.
• Dream Sequence: The closing scene of the film.
• Fake Real Turn: At the end of the story, the Berry family now owns the (first, American) Hotel New Hampshire, which they have turned into their private home (although they don't tell Win that it's no longer an operating hotel). In the middle of the night during a blizzard a family comes upon the Hotel, and rather than turn them away the Berries essentially reopen the hotel just for them
• Hollywood Homely: Susie in the movie.
• Hot Guy, Ugly Wife: Eventually, John and Susie.
• Jumping on a Grenade: Win Berry and the radicals' bomb. He survives, but is blinded.
• Misaimed Fandom: In-universe, Lilly's second book has one.
  • Misaimed Fandoms are common in Irving's works.
• Rape as Backstory: Susie the Bear.
• Rape as Drama: Franny.
• Rape Is OK When It Is Bear On Male: Part of the elaborate revenge on Chipper Dove is making him think he's about to be raped by a bear (really Susie) that's in the habit of raping men. Again, the movie plays what in the book is a serious dramatic moment for laughs.
• Rescue Romance: Probably at the root of Franny and Junior's eventual (happy and lasting) marriage, even though it takes years for it to reach that point.
• Rule of Symbolism: Sorrow, both alive and dead.
  • Lilly's dwarfism.
• Stage Names: In the closing pages of the story, John reveals that Franny became an A-List Hollywood star, but not under her birth name. He admits she uses a stage name, but won't say what it is, only letting the reader know that she is immensely popular and immediately recognizable, and that the reader had almost certainly seen at least one film she was in.
• Suicide: Lilly, because she felt she could not live up to the expectations she thought everyone had of her.
• Taxidermy Terror: The preserved body of the Berries' dead dog Sorrow frightens quite a few people before sinking into the icy waters of the North Atlantic; among other things, it prevents John from losing his virginity and literally frightens his grandfather to death.
• Terrorists Without a Cause: The radicals in Vienna are nominally Communist, but they're extremely vague about what their actual goals are other than violence for violence's sake.
• Where Da White Women At?: Played seriously; Franny and Junior Jones end up Happily Married.