I usually keep a copy of The Cider House Rules in my car in case I wind up stuck somewhere and need something to read. I've read it through about four or five times and each time I'm amazed at the density, the color, the honest brutality and pain of the world Irving creates. Despite his inelegant language, he is a genius at pace and the structure and the pre-2000 novels are things of real beauty. This one, in particular, is nearly perfect. (I still like Garp better, though.)

I heard recently that J.S. Bach could have written music of a style totally different than what we know him for, but he chose to be old-fashioned. Bach adopted and reinvented the old-fashioned, early-Renaissance form. John Irving uses the form of the novel made popular by Charles Dickens, which is totally different than almost any contemporary novelist you're likely to read.

Regarding the subject matter: The abortion topic is central to the story, and Irving handles it with real skill, avoiding lecture and polemic, presenting people, and fear, and choices, and consequence. I would say the political issue is the seed around which the humanity of the novel develops, full, round, luscious, irresistible.