The Cider House Rules

Zusatztext "Superb in scope and originality! a novel as good as one could hope to find from any author! anywhere! anytime. Engrossing! moving! thoroughly satisfying." --Joseph Heller Informationen zum Autor JOHN IRVING was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942. His first novel, Setting Free the Bears, was published in 1968, when he was twenty-six. He competed as a wrestler for twenty years, and coached wrestling until he was forty-seven. Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times, winning in 1980 for The World According to Garp. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules. In 2013, he won a Lambda Literary Award for In One Person. An international writer, his books have been translated into more than thirty-five languages. A Prayer for Owen Meany is his best-selling novel, in every language . A dual citizen of the United States and Canada, John Irving lives in Toronto. Klappentext First published in 1985, The Cider House Rules is John Irving's sixth novel. Set in rural Maine in the first half of this century, it tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch--saint and obstetrician, founder and director of the orphanage in the town of St. Cloud's, ether addict and abortionist. It is also the story of Dr. Larch's favorite orphan, Homer Wells, who is never adopted. The Boy Who Belonged to St. Cloud's In the hospital of the orphanage--the boys' division at St. Cloud's, Maine--two nurses were in charge of naming the new babies and checking that their little penises were healing from the obligatory circumcision. In those days (in 192_), all boys born at St. Cloud's were circumcised because the orphanage physician had experienced some difficulty in treating uncircumcised soldiers, for this and for that, in World War I. The doctor, who was also the director of the boys' division, was not a religious man; circumcision was not a rite with him--it was a strictly medical act, performed for hygienic reasons. His name was Wilbur Larch, which, except for the scent of ether that always accompanied him, reminded one of the nurses of the tough, durable wood of the coniferous tree of that name. She hated, however, the ridiculous name of Wilbur, and took offense at the silliness of combining a word like Wilbur with something as substantial as a tree. The other nurse imagined herself to be in love with Dr. Larch, and when it was her turn to name a baby, she frequently named him John Larch, or John Wilbur (her father's name was John), or Wilbur Walsh (her mother's maiden name had been Walsh). Despite her love for Dr. Larch, she could not imagine Larch as anything but a last name--and when she thought of him, she did not think of trees at all. For its flexibility as a first or as a last name, she loved the name of Wilbur--and when she tired of her use of John, or was criticized by her colleague for overusing it, she could rarely come up with anything more original than a Robert Larch or a Jack Wilbur (she seemed not to know that Jack was often a nickname for John). If he had been named by this dull, love-struck nurse, he probably would have been a Larch or a Wilbur of one kind or another; and a John, a Jack, or a Robert--to make matters even duller. Because it was the other nurse's turn, he was named Homer Wells. The other nurse's father was in the business of drilling wells, which was hard, harrowing, honest, precise work--to her thinking her father was composed of these qualities, which lent the word "wells" a certain deep, down-to-earth aura. "Homer" had been the name of one of her family's umpteen cats. This other nurse--Nurse Angela, to almost everyone--rarely repeated the names of her babies, whereas poor Nurse Edna had named three John Wilbur Juniors, and two John Larch the Thirds. Nurse Angela knew an inexhaustible number of no-nonsense nouns, which she diligently e...

Product details

• Authors: John Irving
• Publisher: Modern Library PRH US
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 03.11.1999
• EAN: 9780679603351
• ISBN: 978-0-679-60335-1
• No. of pages: 592
• Dimensions: 145 mm x 210 mm x 30 mm
• Series: Modern Library (Hardcover)
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature