🔗 Share this article

If a few writers enjoy an golden phase, where they hit the pinnacle repeatedly, then U.S. writer John Irving’s ran through a sequence of four fat, satisfying novels, from his late-seventies breakthrough Garp to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. These were expansive, funny, big-hearted works, tying figures he refers to as “misfits” to societal topics from women's rights to abortion.

Following A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been declining returns, aside from in word count. His last novel, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages in length of topics Irving had explored more skillfully in prior books (selective mutism, short stature, gender identity), with a 200-page film script in the center to extend it – as if extra material were required.

So we look at a new Irving with reservation but still a small glimmer of hope, which shines stronger when we learn that Queen Esther – a just four hundred thirty-two pages in length – “revisits the world of His Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties book is one of Irving’s very best works, set largely in an children's home in St Cloud’s, Maine, operated by Dr Wilbur Larch and his protege Homer Wells.

The book is a failure from a author who in the past gave such pleasure

In Cider House, Irving wrote about pregnancy termination and belonging with colour, comedy and an all-encompassing compassion. And it was a significant book because it left behind the subjects that were turning into annoying tics in his novels: wrestling, wild bears, Austrian capital, prostitution.

Queen Esther starts in the made-up village of New Hampshire's Penacook in the twentieth century's dawn, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow adopt teenage orphan the protagonist from the orphanage. We are a several decades before the storyline of His Earlier Novel, yet Wilbur Larch is still recognisable: even then addicted to anesthetic, respected by his nurses, starting every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his presence in Queen Esther is confined to these initial parts.

The Winslows fret about parenting Esther well: she’s Jewish, and “how could they help a teenage Jewish female find herself?” To tackle that, we flash forward to Esther’s grown-up years in the twenties era. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to the region, where she will join the Haganah, the pro-Zionist militant group whose “mission was to safeguard Jewish settlements from opposition” and which would eventually become the foundation of the Israeli Defense Forces.

These are massive themes to take on, but having introduced them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s regrettable that this book is not really about St Cloud's and the doctor, it’s still more disheartening that it’s additionally not really concerning the titular figure. For reasons that must connect to narrative construction, Esther turns into a substitute parent for another of the family's offspring, and delivers to a son, the boy, in the early forties – and the lion's share of this novel is Jimmy’s narrative.

And at this point is where Irving’s fixations come roaring back, both regular and particular. Jimmy relocates to – where else? – the Austrian capital; there’s discussion of evading the military conscription through self-harm (Owen Meany); a canine with a symbolic name (the animal, recall the canine from His Hotel Novel); as well as the sport, sex workers, novelists and penises (Irving’s passim).

He is a less interesting persona than the female lead promised to be, and the minor characters, such as pupils the two students, and Jimmy’s tutor Annelies Eissler, are underdeveloped also. There are some enjoyable scenes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a confrontation where a handful of thugs get beaten with a walking aid and a tire pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has never been a subtle novelist, but that is isn't the issue. He has consistently reiterated his arguments, foreshadowed narrative turns and allowed them to gather in the viewer's imagination before leading them to fruition in lengthy, shocking, amusing sequences. For instance, in Irving’s works, physical elements tend to disappear: recall the tongue in The Garp Novel, the digit in Owen Meany. Those losses resonate through the plot. In the book, a central figure suffers the loss of an limb – but we merely learn thirty pages later the finish.

The protagonist reappears toward the end in the story, but just with a final feeling of concluding. We never discover the complete narrative of her time in Palestine and Israel. The book is a letdown from a author who once gave such joy. That’s the bad news. The good news is that Cider House – upon rereading together with this novel – yet holds up beautifully, after forty years. So pick up that instead: it’s twice as long as Queen Esther, but a dozen times as good.