This Week in Reading: The Cider House Rules by John Irving John Irving is one of the most chaotic novelists I’ve ever read. The Cider House Rules is a behemoth of a book, nearly 600 pages long in paperback, spanning decades, the entire state of Maine, and dozens of characters. Every page is a wild turn—the book is essentially a string of tangents, philosophical discussions about abortion law, random backstory, and anything and everything else you can imagine. Somewhere in the first few chapters the protagonist, Homer Wells, is adopted by a burly, adventurous couple who take him on a camping expedition. They string ropes across a raging river so they can bounce in the white water rapids. As they splash about, a logging company upstream releases a load of felled trees down the river, crushing Homer’s new adoptive parents instantaneously. Homer returns to Saint Clouds, the orphanage that raised him. This bananas, traumatic incident takes place over the course of about three pages, and is barely mentioned again—a mere side note in the biography of Homer Wells.
chaotic neutral
chaotic neutral
chaotic neutral
This Week in Reading: The Cider House Rules by John Irving John Irving is one of the most chaotic novelists I’ve ever read. The Cider House Rules is a behemoth of a book, nearly 600 pages long in paperback, spanning decades, the entire state of Maine, and dozens of characters. Every page is a wild turn—the book is essentially a string of tangents, philosophical discussions about abortion law, random backstory, and anything and everything else you can imagine. Somewhere in the first few chapters the protagonist, Homer Wells, is adopted by a burly, adventurous couple who take him on a camping expedition. They string ropes across a raging river so they can bounce in the white water rapids. As they splash about, a logging company upstream releases a load of felled trees down the river, crushing Homer’s new adoptive parents instantaneously. Homer returns to Saint Clouds, the orphanage that raised him. This bananas, traumatic incident takes place over the course of about three pages, and is barely mentioned again—a mere side note in the biography of Homer Wells.