The Cider House Rules

The Cider House Rules (1993) by John Irving – Ballantine Books – Good Condition

Some novels begin with a young man setting out to discover the world.

The Cider House Rules begins in an orphanage in Maine, where the young man in question has already been adopted, returned, adopted again, returned again, and has therefore acquired a fairly realistic view of human arrangements before most children have finished learning their alphabet.

John Irving’s sprawling, compassionate and frequently darkly comic novel follows Homer Wells, an orphan raised at St. Cloud’s, an institution presided over by the eccentric and formidable Dr. Wilbur Larch. Larch is physician, obstetrician, father figure, ether enthusiast and provider of illegal abortions in an era when the law preferred women to deal with such matters by becoming somebody else’s problem.

Homer grows up assisting Larch and learning medicine, but one subject divides them sharply: abortion. Larch believes it is necessary work because women will seek abortions whether the law approves or not. Homer, despite everything he has seen, cannot bring himself to agree.

Eventually Homer decides he needs to experience life beyond the orphanage, which in a John Irving novel is usually the point at which everybody should make sure the emotional insurance is fully paid up.

He leaves St. Cloud’s with Candy Kendall and Wally Worthington, entering the very different world of the Worthington family’s apple orchard and cider business. Here Homer encounters friendship, love, sex, work, war, responsibility and the complicated discovery that moral principles become considerably harder to maintain once actual human beings begin interfering with them.

The title refers to the rules posted for the migrant workers living in the cider house — rules written by people who do not actually live there.

This, unsurprisingly, turns out to be important.

Irving uses that simple idea to explore one of the novel’s central questions: who gets to make rules for other people? Governments make laws about pregnancies they will never experience. Employers write regulations for workers whose lives they barely understand. Parents make decisions for children. Doctors make decisions for patients. People construct moral systems and then discover that life has declined to read the manual.

The novel tackles enormous subjects — abortion, adoption, racism, sexuality, war, family, duty and personal freedom — but does so through characters rather than lectures. Irving is interested in what happens when admirable principles collide with unpleasant circumstances and somebody still has to make a decision before dinner.

This is not, therefore, a cheerful book about apples.

There are apples.

There is cider.

There is also unwanted pregnancy, abandonment, death, deception, incest, war and enough moral ambiguity to keep several university seminars occupied indefinitely.

Yet the novel is not relentlessly grim. Irving’s characteristic humour runs throughout it, particularly in the eccentric routines of St. Cloud’s and Dr. Larch’s increasingly elaborate attempts to manipulate circumstances from a distance. Tragedy and absurdity frequently occupy the same room, as they have an inconvenient habit of doing in real life.

At its heart, The Cider House Rules is a coming-of-age story about a man who must eventually decide whether the beliefs he formed as a young person can survive contact with the lives of other people. Homer begins convinced that certain lines can be clearly drawn.

Life responds by rubbing most of them out.

Published here in a 1993 Ballantine Books edition, this is one of John Irving’s best-known novels and a substantial, absorbing read for anyone who enjoys big American fiction filled with memorable characters, complicated relationships and moral questions that stubbornly refuse to provide convenient answers.

This copy is in Good condition, meaning it has survived previous readership, shelf life and the general passage of time without needing intervention from Dr. Larch.

ISBN 0345387651.

Ideal for readers of John Irving, modern American literature, family sagas, ethical dramas and novels in which apparently simple rules become increasingly difficult to obey once everybody starts behaving like human beings.

Also recommended for anyone who has ever seen a sign saying RULES MUST BE OBEYED and immediately wondered who wrote them, why, and whether the person concerned had ever actually lived in the cider house.

Sold by Crappy Old Books — where the house rules are minimal, the moral dilemmas are somebody else’s problem, and apples are currently not accepted as payment.

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