John Irving’s The Cider House Rules is one of today’s Kindle Daily Deal books, priced at $1.99 for today only, but that’s not the only Irving novel that’s on sale.
The Cider House Rules (4.5/5 stars, $1.99 today only)
First published in 1985 by William Morrow, The Cider House Rules is John Irving’s sixth novel. Set in rural Maine in the first half of the twentieth 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.
This book was also made into a movie of the same name, starring Michael Caine, Tobey Maguire and Charlize Theron and amazingly, the Instant Video of The Cider House Rules is currently on sale for $3.99 to either rent OR buy! Yes, that’s not a typo: it’s the same price to buy as it is to rent right now.
A Prayer For Owen Meaney (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $4.74)
I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.
In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys—best friends—are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy’s mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn’t believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God’s instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul ball is extraordinary.
This novel was also made into a movie, with the different title Simon Birch. The Instant Video is currently priced at $2.99 to rent and $9.99 to buy.
A Widow For One Year (3.5/5 stars, currently priced at $7.99)
BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from John Irving’s In One Person.
Ruth Cole is a complex, often self-contradictory character–a “difficult” woman. By no means is she conventionally “nice,” but she will never be forgotten.
Ruth’s story is told in three parts, each focusing on a crucial time in her life. When we first meet her–on Long Island, in the summer of 1958–Ruth is only four.
The second window into Ruth’s life opens in the fall of 1990, when Ruth is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career. She distrusts her judgment in men, for good reason.
A Widow for One Year closes in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth Cole is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother. She’s about to fall in love for the first time.
Richly comic, as well as deeply disturbing A Widow for One Year is a multilayered love story of astonishing emotional force. Both ribald and erotic, it is also a brilliant novel about the passage of time and the relentlessness of grief.
Unfortunately, the publisher has not yet elected to release what may be Irving’s best-loved novel, The World According to Garp, in Kindle format. However, the film adapation of The World According to Garp is available in the Instant Video Store, currently priced at $2.99 to rent and $9.99 to buy.