Editors Reads Verdict
Irving's masterpiece — a sweeping, warm, Dickensian novel about abortion rights, belonging, and the orphan's eternal question of where home is, told with the generosity that is Irving's defining quality.
What We Loved
- Dr Larch is one of Irving's greatest characters — the physician who performs abortions out of moral conviction, with full humanity and no didacticism
- The apple orchard sequences have the quality of pastoral — beautiful, specific, and shadowed by what Homer is carrying away from the orphanage
- The novel's argument for abortion rights is made through character and story, not through polemic, which is why it remains persuasive
Minor Drawbacks
- At 560 pages, Irving's Dickensian expansiveness occasionally tips into digression
- The incest subplot is handled with Irving's characteristic directness, which some readers find uncomfortable
Key Takeaways
- → The rules we live by are always invented by someone, for conditions that may no longer apply — the cider house rules are posted for workers who cannot read them
- → Belonging is not given by birth but constructed through choice and commitment — Homer must decide where home is
- → Moral courage is doing what you believe to be right when the consequences fall entirely on you, not on those who taught you
| Author | John Irving |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Ballantine Books |
| Pages | 560 |
| Published | May 21, 1985 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction |
The Cider House Rules Review
The Cider House Rules is John Irving’s most politically urgent novel and, many readers feel, his most fully achieved — a work in which his characteristic qualities (the Dickensian plot, the warmth, the recurring characters, the Maine settings, the long time span) are organized around a moral argument that gives the novel’s expansiveness a structural purpose.
The setting is St Cloud’s, an orphanage in rural Maine run by Dr Wilbur Larch, a physician who delivers babies and performs abortions with equal moral seriousness. Homer Wells, the orphan who cannot be adopted, grows up as Larch’s assistant, trained in obstetrics and by the rhythms of the orphanage’s life: the children who arrive, the women who seek the doctor’s help in either of his services, the particular quality of a life lived among the unwanted. When Homer finally leaves — carried away by a young couple who have come to the doctor — he lands on the coast at an apple orchard, among migrant workers, where he lives a parallel life for years before what he knows and what he believes are finally called upon.
Irving does not write his abortion argument as polemic. He presents it through the character of Dr Larch, who is as close as Irving has come to a saint: a man who gives ether to himself in the dispensary because there is no one to comfort him, who reads to the boys of St Cloud’s every night from Dickens, who has decided what he believes and accepts all the costs of believing it. The novel was adapted into a film by Irving himself, who won an Academy Award for the screenplay. The novel is better — larger, warmer, more Dickensian in all the right ways.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "The Cider House Rules" about?
Homer Wells grows up in an orphanage in Maine run by Dr Larch, a physician who performs both deliveries and abortions. When Homer leaves for the apple orchards of the coast, he carries the doctor's skills and convictions — and must eventually decide what he believes. Irving's most political and most moving novel.
What are the key takeaways from "The Cider House Rules"?
The rules we live by are always invented by someone, for conditions that may no longer apply — the cider house rules are posted for workers who cannot read them Belonging is not given by birth but constructed through choice and commitment — Homer must decide where home is Moral courage is doing what you believe to be right when the consequences fall entirely on you, not on those who taught you
Is "The Cider House Rules" worth reading?
Irving's masterpiece — a sweeping, warm, Dickensian novel about abortion rights, belonging, and the orphan's eternal question of where home is, told with the generosity that is Irving's defining quality.
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