🔗 Share this article

If a few writers have an golden phase, where they hit the heights time after time, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s lasted through a sequence of several fat, satisfying novels, from his 1978 hit Garp to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. Those were rich, humorous, compassionate books, tying protagonists he calls “misfits” to societal topics from gender equality to reproductive rights.

After Owen Meany, it’s been declining returns, except in word count. His most recent book, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages of subjects Irving had examined more skillfully in earlier novels (inability to speak, restricted growth, trans issues), with a two-hundred-page screenplay in the heart to fill it out – as if filler were needed.

So we come to a latest Irving with caution but still a small glimmer of expectation, which burns brighter when we find out that Queen Esther – a mere four hundred thirty-two pages in length – “revisits the world of His Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties book is among Irving’s top-tier novels, taking place largely in an institution in St Cloud’s, Maine, operated by Dr Larch and his protege Wells.

This novel is a letdown from a novelist who previously gave such delight

In His Cider House Novel, Irving discussed pregnancy termination and acceptance with richness, humor and an comprehensive empathy. And it was a significant book because it moved past the subjects that were becoming repetitive habits in his novels: wrestling, wild bears, Austrian capital, the oldest profession.

Queen Esther opens in the imaginary town of New Hampshire's Penacook in the twentieth century's dawn, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow welcome 14-year-old orphan Esther from the orphanage. We are a a number of years prior to the events of The Cider House Rules, yet Wilbur Larch remains recognisable: still dependent on ether, beloved by his staff, starting every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his appearance in the book is restricted to these initial scenes.

The Winslows are concerned about raising Esther properly: she’s Jewish, and “how could they help a adolescent Jewish female find herself?” To address that, we move forward to Esther’s later life in the Roaring Twenties. She will be a member of the Jewish migration to the region, where she will join Haganah, the Jewish nationalist armed organisation whose “purpose was to protect Jewish settlements from opposition” and which would subsequently form the basis of the IDF.

Those are huge themes to address, but having brought in them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is hardly about the orphanage and the doctor, it’s even more disheartening that it’s additionally not focused on the main character. For causes that must involve narrative construction, Esther ends up as a substitute parent for one more of the family's daughters, and delivers to a baby boy, James, in 1941 – and the lion's share of this book is the boy's story.

And here is where Irving’s fixations reappear loudly, both typical and particular. Jimmy relocates to – of course – the Austrian capital; there’s mention of avoiding the military conscription through self-harm (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a dog with a symbolic name (Hard Rain, remember the earlier dog from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, sex workers, writers and genitalia (Irving’s passim).

The character is a duller character than the female lead hinted to be, and the minor figures, such as pupils the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher Annelies Eissler, are underdeveloped as well. There are some nice set pieces – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a fight where a handful of ruffians get battered with a crutch and a air pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has never been a nuanced novelist, but that is isn't the difficulty. He has repeatedly repeated his points, foreshadowed narrative turns and enabled them to gather in the viewer's thoughts before leading them to fruition in lengthy, surprising, funny sequences. For example, in Irving’s books, physical elements tend to go missing: remember the oral part in Garp, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces resonate through the story. In this novel, a key figure suffers the loss of an upper extremity – but we only find out thirty pages the end.

She returns in the final part in the novel, but merely with a last-minute impression of ending the story. We never discover the complete narrative of her life in the Middle East. This novel is a failure from a author who once gave such delight. That’s the negative aspect. The upside is that His Classic Novel – revisiting it alongside this novel – still remains beautifully, after forty years. So choose the earlier work as an alternative: it’s twice as long as the new novel, but 12 times as good.