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THE CIDER HOUSE RULES

A NOVEL

As in The World According to Garp, a young man is trying to find his way as he grows up amid institutional, individual, familial, and social craziness in upper New England. An orphan whose adoptions never stick, Homer Wells keeps returning to the institution in remote St. Cloud's, Maine, that is presided over by it's elderly founder, ascetic Dr. Wilbur Larch, committed and expert obstetrician and abortionist (as well as ether addict). Dr. Latch's creed is to give people what they want: an orphan or an abortion. He and his aging female staff count on Homer to grow up to succeed Larch in "the Lord's work" of providing abortions in this pre-World War II world; but while Homer is an accomplished apprentice, his principles are resolutely pro-life. At 20, he leaves the orphanage to live with a wealthy family of coastal apple-growers, whose son and future daughter-in-law are the Golden Delicious variety and become his closest friends. Homer becomes expert at the business, which involves sorting marketable perfect apples from the bruised ones good only for the cider press. But with the apples comes temptation, leading to problems with the rules of love, a not-quite Jules-et-Jim-like solution, and an ultimate crisis that brings the book to a resounding, but awfully pat, resolution. As with Garp, Irving is not afraid of sentiment—and here knows how to stir the emotions in skillful depictions of parental love, unwanted orphans, Alzheimer-stricken adults, and distraught women desperate for a D&C. Even in scenes of appalling horror, Irving can be very funny—he shows obvious indebtedness to Dickens—but there is a less savory element in the way he presents some of his pathetic characters—especially females—as titillating freaks. And the cranking out of the less-than-gripping plot is made palatable largely by episodic situations involving the more vivid minor characters. Most seriously, despite echoes of the clearly "significant" title throughout, it is not at all clear what exactly is the novel's point. Finally, this effort is sometimes moving or amusing, but also irritating and ultimately disappointing.

Pub Date: June 17, 1985

ISBN: 0679603352

Page Count: 571

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1985

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THE SECRET HISTORY

The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992

ISBN: 1400031702

Page Count: 592

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992

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OF MICE AND MEN

Steinbeck is a genius and an original.

Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.

This is as completely different from Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle as they are from each other. Only in his complete understanding of the proletarian mentality does he sustain a connecting link though this is assuredly not a "proletarian novel." It is oddly absorbing this picture of the strange friendship between the strong man and the giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find in a ranch what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them. There's a simplicity, a directness, a poignancy in the story that gives it a singular power, difficult to define.  Steinbeck is a genius and an original.

Pub Date: Feb. 26, 1936

ISBN: 0140177396

Page Count: 83

Publisher: Covici, Friede

Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1936

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