the cider house rules - john irving
Somehow, I had never read The Cider House Rules, although I love John Irving. Well, his early works, not so sure I'm up to what he has been doing these past years, I think I may have abandoned his most recent ones about 100 pages in.
I saw the film a few weeks ago, and loved it, so I got the book to read on my holiday in Denmark. Which was a very good idea - it was the perfect book for having hours to read every day, since it's long, and has this magical, repetitive, sing-song tone in places that's really rewarding if you have the time to immerse yourself in it. Almost made me want to pick up Dickens again, who is clearly a big inspiration to Irving. I also love his obvious joy in storytelling - I can almost see the author wringing his hands in glee thinking up his stories and his little running gags.
I think Irving's adaptation of the book for the screen was very clever - the whole timeline has been changed, and characters and events were altered (or even disappeared), but for the film, it is definitely better this way (thankfully doing away with the need for old-people make-up, which still doesn't work all that well). And I'm glad I saw the film first, so I didn't get attached to the book's way of doing things as the One and Only Way.
14-09-2008
