Irving’s Cider House

“And even in the fog that rolled over those bright, coastal lawns of Heart’s Haven’s well-to-do, there was sometimes in the storm-coming air that leaden, heart-sinking feeling that was the essence of the air of St. Cloud’s.”

I could have opened any chapter in John Irving’s The Cider House Rules to find a great sentence. St Cloud is the rural Maine town where there is an orphanage that provides the setting for this coming-of-age story. The orphans help at the cider house during picking season. Irving excels at using place to instill emotion. This is a complex human story but one in which place helps tell the story too. What books have you read where the place is a “character” in the story too?

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