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Book Review of Cider House Rules

Cider House Rules
Cider House Rules
Author: John Irving
Genre: Literature & Fiction
Book Type: Paperback
JuneCarter avatar reviewed my favorite author, hands down on + 2 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 6


Not sure if I love this book more, or "Prayer for Owen Meany". These books are like 10 course dinner feasts, full of characters, ideas, places, thoughts, yet everything ties together in the end. I love how the most insignificant sentence in an early chapter turns out to be the most important thing later in the book. Irving does that alot, I find myself going back and re-reading paragraphs from chapters ago and marveling how they tie in. I imagine these books would have been great Radio Serial Shows, where you would get to hear one chapter a week and you couldn't wait to hear the next. I can't really say what the book is about, it is so much more than a straight plot line, but I will tell you that the title, "Cider House Rules", refers to the Cider House on an apple farm. The apple pickers stay in the Cider House while they are working to pick apples. The Cider House Rules are a list of Rules that are to be followed by those living in the Cider House. But the book also is about an orphanage, and an orphan who grows up with a doctor as a mentor and then he ends up at the apple farm where the Cider House is and then he falls for this girl...well, just read it.