[There] is no denying that [John Irving] has at least one thing in common with … Twain and Dickens: he can tell stories. Things happen in The Hotel New Hampshire; if one admired Irving for nothing else, one would have to admit that he can keep as many narrative balls in the air without dropping them as anyone in America now writing fiction. Whether or not his books instruct and delight as we critics are supposed to think they should, they are full of characters and events, and suffused with details, surprises, digressions, subplots and asides. They are very much written too, which is to say they are literary constructs as opposed to screenplay outlines in disguise. For all of that, they move; most readers will not fail, having begun The Hotel New Hampshire, to read all the way to the last sad death.

Speaking personally, I cared for...