{"id":5292,"date":"2026-04-30T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T14:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/saltlakedsa.org\/?p=5292"},"modified":"2026-04-28T11:18:42","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T17:18:42","slug":"an-overdue-review-of-the-hotel-new-hampshire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/saltlakedsa.org\/es\/2026\/04\/30\/an-overdue-review-of-the-hotel-new-hampshire\/","title":{"rendered":"An Overdue Review of The Hotel New Hampshire"},"content":{"rendered":"

And beginning the feminist conversation with myself<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is an opinion piece written by an individual member and was not voted on by membership. Opinion pieces from members do not reflect the opinions of other members and are not chapter approved statements.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2\/10. Would not recommend. This book plays up some of the worst stereotypes and effects of white American culture, and it does so through horrific themes. Suicide and incest are pervasively spoonfed to you throughout the novel in ways that make me sick. Hate that. Hated the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, Irving\u2019s emotional jiu-jitsu and exploration of dark and morbid topics is supposedly part of the fun. He\u2019s been praised for his matter-of-fact presentations of heavy themes. Failure to find stability in a family, the loss of loved ones to a plane crash, and suicide are all explored to magnify the absurdity of loss\u2019s effects on us. There is a tremendous depth to his works at times. This is, in theory, the work of someone who truly understands the human condition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But come on. He doesn’t need to romanticize everything morbid. I don\u2019t know what incest looks like with two consenting adults (as is so tastefully <\/em>portrayed in the novel), but it doesn\u2019t look like that<\/em>. I mean, I would know. I haven\u2019t spent the last year grappling with the internalized misogyny my family instilled in itself to keep victims quiet just to think the book was accurate<\/em>. Irving barely explores the difficulty of finding, documenting, and addressing households affected by incestual abuse\u2014no matter how often that abuse happens. Sure, I wasn\u2019t directly impacted, but I had my close encounters. I knew enough to know how it worked. If nothing happened<\/em>, it wasn\u2019t going to be talked about. An odd interaction with an uncle; a strange drawing with familiar faces- that\u2019s nothing. And if something did<\/em> happen? If an abuser was amongst the family again? If you told someone what was happening? Don\u2019t worry. It\u2019s taken care of. Don\u2019t. Talk. About. It.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It won\u2019t be reported.

And if it is, what happens in the courtroom stays in the courtroom. There will be no family dinner-table discussion.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Look, all I\u2019m saying is if John Irving is gonna discuss the perverted nature of our society, he should do it right. I\u2019m aware most of his writings begin about a decade or two before the Epstein class really started to dig into our cultural framework, but I just think that\u2019s no excuse. For me, once what was going on really started to click, I began to ask questions. Like a half-decent writer, I tried to make sense of what was happening. I tried to understand it so that I could talk about it correctly<\/em>. Obviously, that\u2019s been difficult and so far unsuccessful. I still feel the effects of asking those questions in myself, in the ways I shut down. There’s no correct way to talk about it when there’s no one willing to talk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I guess I\u2019m just upset that I don\u2019t think Irving accounted for that in this novel\u2014in any of his novels. I mean, he has like 20 of them and the majority portray incest, so I think this might just be his thing and not something he\u2019s \u201cunafraid to talk about\u201d. And he still hasn\u2019t taken the time to get it right. He talks about it the way most people misinterpret Lolita<\/em>. As if it\u2019s almost a beautiful thing in his misunderstood eyes. But whatever. He\u2019s gonna get the praise he\u2019s gonna get.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It feels like Irving has this self-righteous air around the subject, like he understands it differently and can therefore talk about it differently. And it\u2019s frustrating because, well, I <\/em>can\u2019t talk about it at all. I don\u2019t mean within my family. I mean because I can\u2019t<\/em>. I can’t get myself to talk about it. I can\u2019t talk about it because my family\u2019s conditioning to keep us quiet worked<\/em>. Every conversation about gender-based violence; every conversation about defining feminism; every conversation where I feel like it could come up, I avoid. And if I don\u2019t avoid it, I walk away shaking. Having been through what I\u2019ve been through, within and without my family, it\u2019s almost easier to be victimized and to dissociate than to go through the process of analyzing what happened. I was trained to be more afraid of how I\u2019ll be perceived if I talk about it than of actually being abused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t keep watching my mom turn into a scared little girl whenever her brother\u2019s name is mentioned. I can\u2019t avoid my cousin anymore because I don\u2019t know how to ask if he meant to send me what he did. I can\u2019t keep watching my aunt relive finding those notebooks at 15 and reading her own name in them. I can\u2019t keep asking myself if the decades-long family friends know how their daughter was talked about; that when I hit puberty, my body was compared to hers; that her sister was written about in those notebooks too. I can\u2019t hear more stories from other women in my family about the patriarchs within it. And now that it\u2019s \u201cover,\u201d I can\u2019t watch while the older generations fight to keep these things undiscovered, as if there was never a judge or jury involved\u2014to pretend they haven’t paid extra for people to have personal security during their prison sentence. I can\u2019t learn about them lying to protect the abusers. I can’t do this anymore. So, so much has been buried under the rug that any discussion was suffocated before those most hurt could get peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I’ll learn to speak up. At home, and out in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


I haven’t been much of a feminist yet; I’m just now truly addressing my internalized misogyny. In recent years I’ve become much more aware of what it means to me to be a woman: This comes at the same time that I’ve begun to face the world as a mother. This new understanding of the world has been difficult to accept, and something I spent the last year trying to avoid in the chapter.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No matter how much I didn\u2019t feel ready, being asked repeatedly to figure out childcare, and to attend male-dominated events to make other non-cis men comfortable, and experiencing unintentional-yet-outright sexism eventually led me to \u201caccept my fate.\u201d I let the project I was slowly, privately, and personally working through become a bandaid for others\u2019 bruised egos, all while knowing I wasn\u2019t there yet. I didn\u2019t know what lines were where, or how they were being crossed. I didn\u2019t say anything. As I helped push part of this conversation within SLDSA, I found that I’m still unwilling to actually talk about it. I’m unable to vocalize my thoughts without feeling deeply uncomfortable; presenting the Centering Children Resolution\u2014itself born from my first time really confronting what feminism means to me\u2014is the most emotional and distressing experience I’ve had during my time in the chapter.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That distress was needed. I\u2019ve spent years terrified of how every word I said and wrote would sound. Addressing these things within the chapter carried the same emotional weight that I would be buried under addressing them at home. After passing the resolution, the discomfort grew, and I couldn’t sit in silence anymore. Now was the time to address those ghosts which lingered in the hallways of my childhood home. I\u2019m beginning to open the conversation at home, and I\u2019m finally ready to talk out loud. To identify myself as another angry feminist, and actually sit and think through what that means to me: politically, spiritually, personally. Beginning with a book first recommended to me by a family member at 14, I’m on my way to developing a clear feminist framework to bring forward to the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime, I hope Irving comes to actually understand how this plays out in a home; what it means to be a child raised in a family with strange rumors. The Hotel New Hampshire<\/em> does not<\/strong> <\/em>capture it right, and what a shame that is. He really could\u2019ve given life to an often hidden conversation. What a waste. The rest of the novel is fine though, if you were wondering.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n




<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TW: gender-based violence, sexual violence, incest<\/p>\n

This is an opinion piece written by an individual member and was not voted on by membership. Opinion pieces from members do not reflect the opinions of other members and are not chapter approved statements.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":197045069,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_surecart_dashboard_logo_width":"180px","_surecart_dashboard_show_logo":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_orders":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_invoices":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_subscriptions":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_downloads":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_billing":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_account":true,"_eb_attr":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[2557],"tags":[2553],"class_list":["post-5292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-socialist-feminist"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t