![]() Here, two central characters (I won’t’ say who) perish in a plane crash: “Less than six hours out of Boston, they struck the Atlantic Ocean a glancing blow – off the coastline of that part of the continent called France.” Disaster and drama delivered so matter-of-factly become the stuff of life – lives you don’t want to live but are curious to observe. It means he’s a master of understatement. ![]() That doesn’t mean Irving doesn’t care about what he puts his characters through-one sibling is forced to watch while another is raped, an event which traumatises the whole family. “There’s always at least one bear, real or imagined, and some references to wrestling and Vienna. “All John Irving novels have the same mad elements,” says Simon from Foyles. Along with a performing bear, they start life in the years before World War II in the rambling Hotel New Hampshire run by their eccentric parents. ![]() ‘Frank’s queer, Franny’s weird, Lily’s small and Egg is Egg,’ says the narrator, John, of his eccentric siblings. ![]()
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