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A review by bittersweet_symphony
The Cider House Rules by John Irving
4.0
While this has been my favorite book since I first read it, and I still adore it the second time around, I've dropped it to a 4-star-I-really-liked-it rating.
Few writers do exposition and depth of detail so well (which, unfortunately, also drags the plot speed regularly). Irving's novel contains comic and eccentric characters in largely unbelievable storylines, and yet, because of the amount of history he pours into their lives, he makes their stories realistic. He creates rich 2oth century New England worlds.
For a story ostensibly about abortion, its restrictions, and the unfortunate consequences of limiting access to it, the Cider House Rules is somehow about so much more. It's a coming-of-age story, what it means to become a man, the dynamics between fathers and sons, the complexity of love shared among multiple people, and ultimately, the rather arbitrary nature of the many rules that govern our lives, if we choose to let them.
Homer Wells, our protagonist, is a rather boorish character, likable and inoffensive, but fairly bland. Even when he does what is considered to be 'the wrong thing,' he acts with such genuineness and amiability, that we have little reason to fault him or throw anger at him. Sadly, he's just not that interesting. For all the unusual things that have happened to him, you'd think he'd have a more intriguing or complex personality.
Dr. Larch, the ether-addict abortionist who "delivers mothers" or "delivers babies," is the real heart of the book. He's a curmudgeon, staunch defender of "doing the Lord's work" as he calls it, and although he is surrounded by people who adore him, he doesn't seem to connect much with them. He remains a tall island. He only begins to express his love of Homer Wells when Homer leaves the orphanage for the great wide world. Larch is the character stand-in for John Irving, also a writer himself, evangelizing about his views on abortion, the injustices of the world, and why we should take advantage of the very few opportunities we have to "play god" in this life. His vulnerabilities are hidden behind a tough New England exterior, but, his character is far more interesting than most, in St. Clouds or Oceanview.
From the plethora of plotlines and characters, Irving forges for us, the one which least interested me was Melanie. She plays a helpful role early on, challenging Homer's timidity, but having read the Cider House Rules a second time, I understand, and greatly appreciate, why they cut her out of the screenplay. She has minimal impact on Homer Wells once he leaves St. Clouds; he thinks nothing of her after the orphanage. Although she is a large impetus behind Homer revealing the "full truth" about him and Candy, there are plenty of other things which could have pricked his conscious to come clean. Cutting out Melanie's plotline would have trimmed the book, and prevented readers from experiencing the third quarter stall that happens in every Irving book, where he loses your attention; "I'll keep reading ONLY because you've done so much for me as a reader in the past and I want to know the resolution."
I finally found the other fault I've struggled to identify in Irving: dialogue. He devotes very little to dialogue. Most of it is delivered in exposition or as thoughts from the narrator. Rarely do we experience a live-action scene of characters talking at length with each other, without an expositional interruption from the narrator. Dialogue reveals the personality of the characters. Irving's characters did very little of that. He does too much telling us about the characters feelings or reactions, and doesn't let them show enough with their dialogue. I want the characters to win me over, not the narrator.
Still, the Cider House Rules charms. I spent two months with the book and am saddened to leave it behind. If I can find a slightly less-Dickensian writer who is masterful with dialogue and writes better female characters, I'd been in literary heaven.
Few writers do exposition and depth of detail so well (which, unfortunately, also drags the plot speed regularly). Irving's novel contains comic and eccentric characters in largely unbelievable storylines, and yet, because of the amount of history he pours into their lives, he makes their stories realistic. He creates rich 2oth century New England worlds.
For a story ostensibly about abortion, its restrictions, and the unfortunate consequences of limiting access to it, the Cider House Rules is somehow about so much more. It's a coming-of-age story, what it means to become a man, the dynamics between fathers and sons, the complexity of love shared among multiple people, and ultimately, the rather arbitrary nature of the many rules that govern our lives, if we choose to let them.
Homer Wells, our protagonist, is a rather boorish character, likable and inoffensive, but fairly bland. Even when he does what is considered to be 'the wrong thing,' he acts with such genuineness and amiability, that we have little reason to fault him or throw anger at him. Sadly, he's just not that interesting. For all the unusual things that have happened to him, you'd think he'd have a more intriguing or complex personality.
Dr. Larch, the ether-addict abortionist who "delivers mothers" or "delivers babies," is the real heart of the book. He's a curmudgeon, staunch defender of "doing the Lord's work" as he calls it, and although he is surrounded by people who adore him, he doesn't seem to connect much with them. He remains a tall island. He only begins to express his love of Homer Wells when Homer leaves the orphanage for the great wide world. Larch is the character stand-in for John Irving, also a writer himself, evangelizing about his views on abortion, the injustices of the world, and why we should take advantage of the very few opportunities we have to "play god" in this life. His vulnerabilities are hidden behind a tough New England exterior, but, his character is far more interesting than most, in St. Clouds or Oceanview.
From the plethora of plotlines and characters, Irving forges for us, the one which least interested me was Melanie. She plays a helpful role early on, challenging Homer's timidity, but having read the Cider House Rules a second time, I understand, and greatly appreciate, why they cut her out of the screenplay. She has minimal impact on Homer Wells once he leaves St. Clouds; he thinks nothing of her after the orphanage. Although she is a large impetus behind Homer revealing the "full truth" about him and Candy, there are plenty of other things which could have pricked his conscious to come clean. Cutting out Melanie's plotline would have trimmed the book, and prevented readers from experiencing the third quarter stall that happens in every Irving book, where he loses your attention; "I'll keep reading ONLY because you've done so much for me as a reader in the past and I want to know the resolution."
I finally found the other fault I've struggled to identify in Irving: dialogue. He devotes very little to dialogue. Most of it is delivered in exposition or as thoughts from the narrator. Rarely do we experience a live-action scene of characters talking at length with each other, without an expositional interruption from the narrator. Dialogue reveals the personality of the characters. Irving's characters did very little of that. He does too much telling us about the characters feelings or reactions, and doesn't let them show enough with their dialogue. I want the characters to win me over, not the narrator.
Still, the Cider House Rules charms. I spent two months with the book and am saddened to leave it behind. If I can find a slightly less-Dickensian writer who is masterful with dialogue and writes better female characters, I'd been in literary heaven.