The Hotel New Hampshire

Chapter One The Bear Called State O Maine


The summer my father bought the bear, none of us was born we weren t even conceived: not Frank, the oldest; not Franny, the loudest; not me, the next; and not the youngest of us, Lilly and Egg. My father and mother were hometown kids who knew each other all their lives, but their union, as Frank always called it, hadn t taken place when Father bought the bear.

Their union, Frank? Franny used to tease him; although Frank was the oldest, he seemed younger than Franny, to me, and Franny always treated him as if he were a baby. What you mean, Frank, Franny said, is that they hadn t started screwing.

They hadn t consummated their relationship, said Lilly, one time; although she was younger than any of us, except Egg, Lilly behaved as if she were everyone s older sister a habit Franny found irritating.

Consummated ? Franny said. I don t remember how old Franny was at the time, but Egg was not old enough to hear talk like this: Mother and Father simply didn t discover sex until after the old man got that bear, Franny said. That bear gave them the idea he was such a gross, horny animal, humping trees and playing with himself and trying to rape dogs.

He mauled an occasional dog, Frank said, with disgust. He didn t rape dogs.

He tried to, Franny said. You know the story.

Father s story, Lilly would then say, with a disgust slightly different from Frank s disgust; it was Franny Frank was disgusted with, but Lilly was disgusted with Father.

And so it s up to me the middle child, and the least opinionated to set the record straight, or nearly straight. We were a family whose favorite story was the story of my mother and father s romance: how Father bought the bear, how Mother and Father fell in love and had, in rapid succession, Frank, Franny, and me ( Bang, Bang, Bang! as Franny would say); and, after a brief rest, how they then had Lilly and Egg ( Pop and Fizzle, Franny says). The story we were

John Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times winning once, in 1980, for the novel The World According to Garp. In 1992, Mr. Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules a film with seven Academy Award nominations.

A hectic, gaudy saga with the verve of a Marx Brothers movie. The New York Times Book Review

A startlingly original family saga that combines macabre humor with Dickensian sentiment. Time

Rejoice! John Irving has written another book according to your world. . . . You must read this book. Los Angeles Times

Spellbinding . . . intensely human . . . a high-wire act of dazzling virtuosity. Cosmopolitan