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Chargement... The Hotel New Hampshire (Black Swan) (original 1981; édition 1999)par John Irving
Information sur l'oeuvreL'hôtel New Hampshire par John Irving (1981)
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I wanted to give this three stars, but in the end, Irving is too good a storyteller to get less than four. His writing is very rambling, but he could be speaking (I listened to the audiobook) for hours and it's almost hypnotic, imprisoning you in his bizarre world, filled with vivid, well-drawn characters. You have to accept that his worlds are unrealistic and bizarre. Then writer's pet obsessions play a prominent role, and in this case my reading experience suffered because I read this right after The World According to Garp, where Irving plays with exactly the same obsessions and themes (rape, bears in hotels...). It felt repetitive because of that. And yet, a very skilled narrator, that traps you within his fictional world. ( ) It took me some time to think about why I loved this book so much. Parts of it were disturbing and hard to get through but in the end it was about an unconventional family that pulled each other through all of the things in life that they couldn't control, and managed to find happiness in their disfunction. I didn't love all of the characters but I loved their strengths and weaknesses and how they each identified with one another. Even though I sometimes find it hard to get through, I'm still a loyal John Irving fan :) Anche questo romanzo di Irving mi ha appassionato fino all'ultima pagina, ma sinceramente non lo consiglierei come "primo libro" a chi non conosce l'autore perchè potrebbe rivelarsi un po' noioso. Purtroppo la traduzione di quarant'anni fa di Paolini è ormai pietosa, a dir poco: ci vorrebbe una traduzione nuova di zecca per apprezzare di più il romanzo. Once again the recurring Irving set of characters, situations and areas of interest are all here. Bears, gays, lesbians, rape, sex, wrestling, barbells, body-building, prostitutes, boarding schools, Vienna, Freud, German, fears, bullies, single parents, family, siblings, New England, Iowa, dwarfs, explosions, literature, writers, poets, orgasms, death, suicide, terrorists, and even an epilogue. It is amazing how Irving always takes these elements and by adding imagination always seems to create something entirely new and different. While the hotel situation is not totally new in The Hotel New Hampshire Irving pushes its limits. From a resort hotel to a foreign destination to a remote rehabilitation station. He even throws in some urban elegance . All with their own twists. While a large family is the focus throughout a pair of the children are even more central to the arc of the novel. A brother and his one year older sister have a closeness that captures our attention. We see their playfulness develop into what they eventually realize is love but they are conflicted because they know they have to keep their desires in check. They recognize there are limits and lines they should not cross. Franny, the older sister is the leader in the family. The father is a dreamer, the mother is a follower, Franny calls the shots. Her brother, John, is the narrator and our eyes. Franny and John understand their lust and put off doing anything about it for years. One day Franny decides they have to get this out of their systems once and for all. She lets John know they are going to spend one full day making love until it hurts so much they'll never want to do it again. Amazingly Irving never even mentions incest. These siblings love each other. There's an older gay brother, Frank, who has obsessions with uniforms, cymbals, and taxidermy which he practices on the over the hill family dog after he's put down, much to the chagrin of most of the family. There's a younger sister, Lilly, who never grows and eventually becomes an author and the savior of the family. The older brother becomes Lilly's agent and even Franny's agent once Franny becomes a movie star, whose career starts off when she plays herself when the novel about the family becomes a film. Beyond the family there are additional characters who are, in a word, characters. There's Freund who introduces the family to performing bears and entices them to come to Vienna. There's the grandfather, the Iowa lineman who introduces John to body-building and tends to ground everybody with his earthiness. And there's Suzie who hides herself in a bear costume. Then of course there's always John Irving whose Iowa, boarding school, wrestling, New England, etc background are everywhere. At one point the characters are discussing the ending of The Great Gatsby. One easily imagines this is lifted from an Iowa workshop discussion of how to end a novel. Irving was either taking copious notes or has an excellent memory, but I'm clearly reading in more than what's on the page. How Irving gets us to the terrorists and the prostitutes and bases them in a hotel is woven into the arc in ways which feel.....reasonable. Don't all hotels have prostitutes? Isn't Vienna where you would expect to find terrorists? After reading the book I sought out the movie. It's harder to find than Garp or Cider House Rules. I have mixed emotions about the film. It tries desperately to get as much of the book in as possible making it extremely fast paced but much of the underlying connectivity gets lost in the process. Unfortunately someone decided to make this a star vehicle rather than experiment with unknown actors. Wallace Shawn and Wilford Brimley make great Freud and Iowa Bob. Jodie Foster is okay as Franny. Unfortunately casting someone known for their beauty as Suzie makes little sense. But the worst casting is Bob Lowe as John. There is no way we can see him as a body-builder and he does not have the voice for a narrator. I can't wait for the remake.
Like a fairy tale - and Irving reminds us with tireless zeal that his novel is a fairy tale -''The Hotel New Hampshire'' is both fanciful and cruel. The Berry family is oddly susceptible to disaster; suicides, airplane crashes, blindings by terrorist bombs abound. Nor is this feisty crew beyond wreaking havoc among themselves. ''To each other, we were as normal and nice as the smell of bread, we were just a family,'' observes the narrator (named John, in the autobiographical fashion of the day); but sibling incest is a dominant motif, and their incessant colloquys are conducted in a language heavy with insult and innuendo. Appartient à la série éditorialeKeltainen kirjasto (167) Keltainen pokkari (51) Tascabili [Bompiani] (32) Est contenu dansFait l'objet d'une adaptation dansContient un guide de lecture pour étudiantPrix et récompensesDistinctionsListes notables
""The first of my father's illusions was that bears could survive the life lived by human beings, and the second was that human beings could survive a life led in hotels.""So says John Berry, son of a hapless dreamer, brother to a cadre of eccentric siblings, and chronicler of the lives lived, the loves experienced, the deaths met, and the myriad strange and wonderful times encountered by the family Berry. Hoteliers, pet-bear owners, friends of Freud (the animal trainer and vaudevillian, that is), and playthings of mad fate, they "dream on" in a funny, sad, outrageous, and moving novel by the remarkable author of "A Widow for One Year" and "The Cider House Rules," Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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