The Cider House Rules

I finished reading this book a while back, and I really liked it. John Irving’s writing style is easy/fun for me to read, I guess. I haven’t seen the movie in a while so I want to go back and see all the differences (and there’s a lot of them). I could picture Candy as Charlize Theron, but that’s just because I have a crush on her. The bad thing was I wasn’t able to picture any of the other characters other than the actors that played them in the movie. Though maybe it’s not so bad, because I can’t really picture a face to go with a character when reading (damn you TV for ruining my imagination), like with Melony.

One question that stuck with me though, why was Herb Fowler damaging the condoms he was always giving out? Just to be a jerk? Was there something I missed? Maybe I forgot to read a chapter, but I never saw an explanation for this. Was the sole purpose of Fowler’s vandalism to explain how Candy and Wally got pregnant the first time? Why would Irving need to have Fowler ruining the condoms, why not just have it break?

That’s the question that I just thought about. If anyone wants to discuss other points of the book feel free.

I THINK that Herb was either Catholic, or a sick puppy who thought ‘ruining’ other people’s lives by pulling this ‘joke’ on them was funny.