"The Hotel New Hampshire," the story of an eccentric family that sets up house in various unlikely hotels here and abroad, is a hectic gaudy saga with the verve of a Marx Brothers movie; one can see those old words "antic" and "zany" emblazoned on the marquee. Midgets, dwarfs and performing bears race in and out of the novel with manic haste; the narrator's homosexual brother sleeps with a dressmaker's dummy; toilets explode: Anything for a laugh.

But these warmhearted hijinks are deceptive. 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...