John Irving enjoys a rare and prominent place among contemporary American writers not only for having published a string of best-sellers but also for having received accolades from critics in the popular and academic press alike. His status has been assured since the dizzying success of The World According to Garp in 1978. In addition to selling more than 120,000 hardcover copies and more than 3 million paperbacks, The World According to Garp established Irving as an American cultural icon--a phenomenon that R. Z. Sheppard subsequently referred to in Time magazine as "Garpomania" in the early 1980s. In 1979 Irving won the prestigious American Book Award. Since the publication of The World According to Garp, Irving's novels have been adapted into four motion pictures, including The Cider House Rules (1999), for which Irving received an Oscar for best screenplay in 2000. Originally published in 1985, The Cider House Rules--along with The Hotel New Hampshire...