Vienna Primer: Soap Opera a la John Irving

Photo by infraredhorsebite

A sibling love affair, a taxidermic incident with the family dog (whose name, of all things, is Sorrow), and a dancing bear. Need we say more? These plot details are just the tip of the iceberg in John Irving’s novel, The Hotel New Hampshire.

The story follows a family from New England as they open their Hotel New Hampshire and endure various travesties. They take the show on the road, moving to Vienna to run a Gasthaus for an old family friend, Freud, a former European refugee who, along with his traveling companion—the dancing bear—originally brought the parents together. Intrigued yet? You haven’t even reached Vienna.

We don’t want to spoil the plot, so we’ll just say that once you arrive in Vienna you can look forward to a hotel floor of prostitutes and a plot by radicals to blow up the Vienna State Opera. It’s a wild ride, and we are willing to bet you won’t want to put it down.

Because Vienna is a fairly placid place, a novel like this one provides an enjoyable and counterintuitive take on the Austrian capital.