🔗 Share this article

If a few novelists enjoy an imperial era, during which they achieve the heights repeatedly, then U.S. author John Irving’s ran through a run of four substantial, gratifying books, from his late-seventies breakthrough Garp to 1989’s His Owen Meany Book. Those were rich, humorous, warm books, linking figures he describes as “outsiders” to social issues from feminism to reproductive rights.

After Owen Meany, it’s been waning results, except in page length. His last novel, the 2022 release His Last Chairlift Novel, was 900 pages of subjects Irving had examined more skillfully in earlier works (selective mutism, short stature, gender identity), with a lengthy script in the center to extend it – as if filler were required.

Thus we come to a recent Irving with care but still a faint flame of hope, which shines brighter when we find out that Queen Esther – a just four hundred thirty-two pages in length – “returns to the universe of The Cider House Novel”. That 1985 book is among Irving’s top-tier works, taking place primarily in an institution in the town of St Cloud’s, operated by Dr Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Wells.

This novel is a disappointment from a author who once gave such joy

In Cider House, Irving explored termination and identity with vibrancy, humor and an all-encompassing understanding. And it was a major book because it left behind the topics that were turning into tiresome tics in his books: the sport of wrestling, bears, Austrian capital, sex work.

Queen Esther starts in the fictional village of Penacook, New Hampshire in the twentieth century's dawn, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow take in 14-year-old ward the protagonist from the orphanage. We are a a number of generations ahead of the events of His Earlier Novel, yet Wilbur Larch stays recognisable: still dependent on anesthetic, beloved by his nurses, beginning every speech with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his presence in Queen Esther is confined to these early parts.

The couple fret about raising Esther correctly: she’s Jewish, and “how might they help a adolescent girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To address that, we flash forward to Esther’s adulthood in the Roaring Twenties. She will be part of the Jewish migration to the area, where she will join the Haganah, the Jewish nationalist militant group whose “mission was to safeguard Jewish settlements from hostile actions” and which would later form the core of the IDF.

Those are massive subjects to address, but having brought in them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s disappointing that the novel is not actually about the orphanage and Dr Larch, it’s even more disheartening that it’s likewise not about the main character. For reasons that must involve narrative construction, Esther becomes a gestational carrier for another of the couple's offspring, and gives birth to a male child, James, in the early forties – and the bulk of this book is the boy's narrative.

And here is where Irving’s obsessions come roaring back, both regular and distinct. Jimmy goes to – of course – the city; there’s discussion of evading the Vietnam draft through bodily injury (Owen Meany); a dog with a significant designation (Hard Rain, remember the earlier dog from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, streetwalkers, writers and male anatomy (Irving’s passim).

Jimmy is a less interesting character than Esther hinted to be, and the minor characters, such as students Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s tutor Annelies Eissler, are one-dimensional also. There are a few enjoyable set pieces – Jimmy deflowering; a fight where a few ruffians get beaten with a crutch and a bicycle pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has never been a subtle writer, but that is not the difficulty. He has repeatedly repeated his ideas, telegraphed narrative turns and enabled them to gather in the reader’s mind before leading them to resolution in long, surprising, entertaining scenes. For instance, in Irving’s works, body parts tend to disappear: think of the tongue in Garp, the digit in His Owen Book. Those missing pieces echo through the story. In the book, a central person is deprived of an upper extremity – but we only learn 30 pages the conclusion.

The protagonist returns in the final part in the story, but only with a eleventh-hour sense of wrapping things up. We never learn the entire narrative of her time in Palestine and Israel. This novel is a disappointment from a novelist who once gave such delight. That’s the downside. The good news is that The Cider House Rules – revisiting it together with this work – still stands up beautifully, 40 years on. So read it in its place: it’s double the length as this book, but far as enjoyable.