Everyone's Hot 4 Homer

The ladies LOVE this orphan: it's part 2 of John Irving January.

I think this is the best cover

We are two-thirds of the way through The Cider House Rules and things are happening. So many of my worries about this section came into fruition, some of them almost immediately. Melony is absolutely back on her bullshit (destroying things and/or people). Things aren’t looking great for Candy and Wally. Dr. Larch is going through a crisis and doing the weirdest creative project ever. I love this book!

I can’t stop thinking about something else I heard in John Irving’s What It Takes episode. He said that he always knows the last line of his books before he starts—in fact, he has to know the last line, or else he doesn’t know what he’s writing toward. He said the middle of the book may change, but that last line never does, and knowing what’s going to happen frees him up to concentrate purely on the sentences.

And what sentences they are. I have never in my life seen so many semicolons, and that’s not even getting into the exclamation points. This is a man who loves punctuation, which is fascinating to me as I learned everything I know about punctuation through osmosis/reading. I barely know how to use a semicolon, so I admire John Irving’s confidence.

Okay, let’s get down to business. When we last left Homer, he was riding off into the sunset with Candy and Wally, ready to embark on life away from the orphanage. And things have not been going great in Homer’s absence. For starters, who’s supposed to read orphan books to all these orphans? I feel bad that Little Dorrit is getting such a bad rap…no one wants to read that book compared to all the better orphan books. Everyone, from Candy to Melony to the nurses, is just like, “This books sucks” and they can’t get past the first page.

Also, remember how I wondered if Melony was going to hurt someone? Well, does she ever. She almost immediately breaks a girl’s collarbone for tenuous barrette-related reasons. And then she tells Dr. Larch, “I broke someone’s arm, once. Or maybe it was something in their chest.” Once? Girl, you’re saying this while Mary Agnes Cork is still writhing in pain on the bathroom floor! Is Melony a genuine psychopath?

Anyway, Melony runs away from the orphanage, ominously saying, “I’m gonna find you, Sunshine.” Even Dr. Larch is worried for Homer—he wants to send him the message that “Melony was out. She was loose in the world.”

The world isn’t ready for Melony. Her only desire is to find Homer, but it turns out it was quite hard to find a man on some random apple orchard back then. Three things about Melony: she loves Jane Eyre, she’s not afraid of some hard work, and she will not hesitate to severely injure any man who tries to sexually assault her. There was an actually terrifying scene where two men chase her through an orchard, but they don’t know who they’re messing with. She nearly kills them and I was impressed, while slightly scared. I loved what one of the men at the orchard said about her afterward: “I wouldn’t have a girlfriend like that. And if I did, I wouldn’t leave her.”

Homer, meanwhile, is blissfully ignorant of Melony’s quest to find and/or possibly dismember him with what she refers to as her “penis knife” (it’s exactly what it sounds like). He loves life on the outside and he loves working at the apple orchard, which is way less complicated than the orphanage. This part made my heart hurt, because I know how much Dr. Larch misses him, but I know how suffocating the orphanage is for Homer. He can’t go back there because, for the first time, he has friends. He can go to drive-in movies and have a normal job and hang out with a family!

And he can also, apparently, be the hottest guy in town. The women at the orchard are going absolutely crazy for Homer’s charms, and I’m not totally sure why because he mostly says, “Right” to every question and is incapable of not correcting people. Maybe it’s his inherent usefulness—everyone likes a guy who can fix things and/or check a cervix. Either way, here’s a list of everyone who’s Hot 4 Homer:

-Melony, duh

-Debra Pettigrew, younger sister of a woman referred to as Big Dot Taft. Don’t worry, we are, of course, extremely focused on this entire family’s weight and we’ll hear about it nonstop.

-Grace Lynch, an abused wife who is throwing herself at Homer in really creative ways, like telling him she needs help getting out of the cider vat and then being completely naked when he shows up.

-Uh-oh…Candy! She’s with Wally but that doesn’t stop her from having feelings for Homer. She even tells him that she loves them both! She’s not even that weirded out when she realizes Homer is keeping her pubic hair in his wallet (Homer…). Well, unfortunately this problem seems to resolves itself.

Homer, as you know, has some very weird sexual experience with Melony, but that doesn’t translate well to the real world. He spends most of his time trying to figure out things that seem obvious to those around him, like that drive-ins are places to make out, not watch movies.

I loved seeing Homer’s exploits around the orchard—meeting all the weird orchard guys (including the guy who won’t stop throwing condoms at people? Even though he’s apparently poking holes in some of them??), meeting all the weird orchard ladies (including the women who won’t stop flirting with Wally), and seeing how John Irving explores race in the 1940s as Homer gets to know the migrant workers who come to the orchard every year.

But what about Dr. Larch? Well, he’s going through it. First off, he’s old, and the board doesn’t think he can run things on his own. They want him to get an assistant, which he’s against because then how is he supposed to perform abortions? What if his assistant is like…a normie? Basically he needs to know that his assistant is going to be cool and not a narc and there’s no way to guarantee that, but he has a plan…and it involves creating an entirely fictitious life for Fuzzy Stone (who, you may remember, died). Dr. Larch is also pissed that Homer won’t write him good letters about what’s going on at the orchard. Dr. Larch is basically me trying to figure out what’s going on in my son’s elementary school classroom. Never enough relevant details!

Here’s a part that broke my heart. Homer is struggling to write these letters and at the end of one, he simply writes, “I remember when you kissed me. I wasn’t really asleep.”

Yes, though Dr. Larch, I remember that, too. He rested in the dispensary. Why didn’t I kiss him more—why not all the time?

These two men obviously love each other but struggle to show it. They said “I love you” that one time, as Homer was leaving. The only kiss Dr. Larch gave Homer was when he thought he was sleeping! And now Dr. Larch regrets it. And do you know what he does? He goes around kissing all the orphans as they sleep, determined not to repeat his mistake. It’s too much for me! One of the orphans says, “What was that all about?” when he leaves, lol.

Dr. Larch shows his love in another way: he invents a heart defect for Homer so that he won’t be able to serve in World War II.

Here’s another part that broke my heart. When Melony is working at an orchard, she reads Jane Eyre at night in the bunk area. Everyone is annoyed at her that she’s reading, and she thinks it’s because her lamp bothers them. But that’s not it!

“What are you readin’ about, anyway?” Wednesday asked.

“Yeah,” Sammy said. “What’s so special ‘bout that book?”

“It’s just a book,” Melony said.

“Pretty big deal that you can read it, huh?” Wednesday asked.

“What?” Melony asked.

“Maybe, if you like it so much,” Rather said, “we might like it, too.”

“You want me to read to you?” Melony asked.

“Somebody read to me, once,” Sandra said.

“It wasn’t me!” Ma said. “It wasn’t your father, either!”

“I never said it was!” Sandra said.

“I never heard nobody read to nobody,” Sammy said.

They just want Melony to read to them. This whole group of men, women, and one child have never had anyone read to them! I’m so glad that John Irving is building Melony into this weird, fully-rounded character because I was worried there at the beginning. We’re still hearing about how big she is, and I’m convinced that John Irving (like so many male authors) doesn’t actually know how much women weigh in general, because one of the men estimates her weight and I was like, “Wait, that’s big?” I know we have a lot of pressing political concerns in America right now, but I do wonder if it might be possible to make it illegal for male authors to write about women’s weight. Like, no mentioning specific numbers, because it’s giving me secondhand embarrassment.

Pearl Harbor is bombed and Wally joins the army—remember that Homer can’t because of his (wink wink) heart condition. And then our section ends with Wally’s plane getting shot down. Wally!!! I’ll admit that I saw this coming because Charlize Theron plays Candy in the movie and like…they’re not putting Charlize in a movie to not play the love interest, you know? I’ll be curious to see how her relationship with Homer changes in Wally’s absence.

I am still amazed by how fun and readable this book is. I think I had it in my head that this was literary fiction, but this is commercial fiction. John Irving talks pretty much everywhere about the influence Charles Dickens had on him, and you can feel it. This is a big old book with a million characters, the passage of time, and so much happening. It’s smart and the writing is lovely, but it’s also just plain fun. Yes, Franzen was fun too, but Franzen is fun in a very different way. I don’t think Franzen cares if you like him or if you think he’s funny. He will go on a twenty page backstory tangent and you can either follow along or not. But John Irving is likable. John Irving wants you to follow along. John Irving is keeping you entertained. What do we need to do to get a John Irving renaissance going? Because people should be reading his books like they do airport thrillers. This is for sure going to go down as one of my best reading experiences of the year, because I’m having the time of my life and I’m also on an emotional rollercoaster. And I’m admiring his use of parentheses!

I’d love to know what you think about the book so far and what your favorite parts are. This week’s selection had less birth body horror but way more “Melony attacks people” body horror. And only some of them deserved it! Justice for Mary Agnes Cork, whose only crime is being annoying and not knowing how to read a room/drive-in.

Next week, it’s the presumably thrilling conclusion of The Cider House Rules. I have no idea what’s going to happen, but I’m ready. See you soon. xo