By MONTE DUTTON

This isn’t the first time I’ve noted that my favorite novelists – Larry McMurtry, Elmore Leonard, Pat Conroy, et al. – have been dying off. Given my own advancing age, there’s no getting around it.

Over the years, I’ve read most of John Irving’s great novels: The Cider House Rules, The World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany among them.

Irving is 83. I was a bit late to the party. There’s plenty more to digest from his menu.

I just finished The Hotel New Hampshire. This review isn’t exactly breaking news. It was published in 1981.

Irving, like the late Ken Kesey, was a wrestler growing up. It shows up in many of his works. He has an extraordinary knack for writing about unsavory topics while still managing to be amusing about them. If there is one word to describe his best work, it’s “offbeat.”

The Hotel New Hampshire occurs three times, one in New Hampshire. The last is in Maine; the middle in in Vienna (Austria). The last isn’t even a hotel; it’s a rape crisis center. As is always the case with Irving, there’s a lot to unpack. He makes the most extraordinary works and deeds seem plausible. He makes awful things amusing, even. It’s quite a gift.

In 450 pages, one of the Berrys is gang raped. There’s a bear that rides a motorcycle and another bear that isn’t one. One sister becomes a famous actress. Another pens a bestseller and commits suicide. The father goes blind stopping terrorism. Mom and the youngest son die in a plane crash.

Yet the principal tone of the novel is upbeat, as incredible as that is. Eventful life goes on. There is no need for a spoiler alert. The Hotel New Hampshire has many more twists and turns than are noted above.

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