After being very impressed with Owen Meaney, I am disappointed with Hotel New Hampshire. And the funny thing is, the same elements I loved about Owen Meaney are the reasons I barely finished Hotel.
I get tired of the constant narrative foreshadowing - "it wasn't the last time Lilly would save us all," etc. Maybe it worked in Owen Meaney because there was a greater theme of fate/destiny, a terrible sense that we were moving toward the inevitable conclusion whether we want to or not. That theme is utterly missing in Hotel, and as a result, the foreshadowing is just annoying.
I have a lot harder time buying some of the ridiculous elements in this story. I'm learning that making the ridiculous believable is a trademark of Irving's style, but, well, if I didn't believe it, then he didn't. A woman in a bear suit that people actually think is a bear? Have you ever seen a woman in a bear suit? It doesn't look anything like a bear.
I get utterly sick of the heavy-handed "Sorrow floats" attempt at symbolism. It doesn't work for me at all. At all.
And it seems like every time the narrative movement starts to slow down, the author kills someone off. How many people die in the course of 400 pages? The body count is in double-digits. At what point am I allowed to stop caring - or start expecting another death? This is an amateur author trick, one I won't let my students get away with.
John Irving is a strong, talented writer, and I will keep reading his books, hoping to find more like Owen Meaney and less like this. He has a great gift for storytelling, if he can just keep it under control, and I think his forte is micro-scenes and logical folly. He writes good, lovable, warm characters (though he could stand to make them a bit more complex.) He flails around with symbolism and mysticism like a rookie writer in this book, but I am hoping that as he continues to write, he will wield that tool more deftly.