There is a benefit to not having read all of the works of a favorite author.

A reader can always reach back and find a past book.

So, is the case with author John Irving, who has penned novels such as “The World According to Garp,” “A Prayer for Owen Meany,” etc.

He wrote and published “The Cider House Rules” about 30 years ago. He won an Oscar for his screen adaptation of the controversial book to a film of the same name.

With “The Cider House Rules,” Irving presents a story about Dr. Larch, a mid-20th century doctor who both runs an orphanage and performs clinically humane abortions prior to the procedure’s legalization. The book focuses on the doctor becoming the father figure to one of the orphans, Homer, a boy whom he will eventually groom to succeed him. Like most Irving books, “Cider House” is also a coming-of-age story, specifically Homer here.

“The Cider House Rules” contains all of the hallmarks of an Irving novel: controversial subject matter; people whose morality refuses to be defined by easy good or evil characteristics; eccentric characters who seem too odd to be real but are invested with such strong personalities that it’s a shame most of them are fictional; and a flow of detail that brings it all to life with an always powerful conclusion.

Throughout “The Cider House Rules,” characters read the works of Charles Dickens, particularly “David Copperfield” repeatedly to the young orphans in Dr. Larch’s charge. In many ways, Irving and this book owe a great deal to Dickens.

“The Cider House Rules” is only one of the reasons why several critics of the past few decades have referred to Irving as the “American Dickens.”