🔗 Share this article

If some novelists enjoy an golden phase, where they hit the pinnacle consistently, then U.S. author John Irving’s extended through a sequence of four substantial, rewarding novels, from his 1978 breakthrough Garp to the 1989 release Owen Meany. These were expansive, funny, warm works, connecting characters he describes as “outliers” to social issues from gender equality to abortion.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been declining results, except in size. His last novel, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages of themes Irving had delved into better in prior novels (mutism, dwarfism, trans issues), with a two-hundred-page film script in the middle to extend it – as if padding were required.

Therefore we look at a new Irving with caution but still a small glimmer of expectation, which burns brighter when we find out that His Queen Esther Novel – a only 432 pages in length – “revisits the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That 1985 novel is among Irving’s finest books, taking place largely in an children's home in the town of St Cloud’s, run by Dr Larch and his apprentice Homer.

This novel is a failure from a author who in the past gave such joy

In Cider House, Irving wrote about abortion and acceptance with richness, wit and an comprehensive empathy. And it was a major work because it moved past the subjects that were evolving into repetitive habits in his books: the sport of wrestling, ursine creatures, Vienna, the oldest profession.

Queen Esther opens in the made-up town of Penacook, New Hampshire in the twentieth century's dawn, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow take in 14-year-old orphan Esther from St Cloud's home. We are a few decades ahead of the storyline of The Cider House Rules, yet the doctor is still identifiable: even then addicted to ether, adored by his nurses, beginning every address with “In this place...” But his role in Queen Esther is limited to these initial parts.

The couple fret about bringing up Esther properly: she’s Jewish, and “in what way could they help a young Jewish female discover her identity?” To address that, we jump ahead to Esther’s later life in the Roaring Twenties. She will be part of the Jewish emigration to Palestine, where she will become part of the paramilitary group, the pro-Zionist armed organisation whose “mission was to defend Jewish communities from Arab attacks” and which would eventually become the core of the Israel's military.

Such are huge subjects to address, but having introduced them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s regrettable that the novel is hardly about St Cloud's and Wilbur Larch, it’s still more upsetting that it’s also not really concerning the titular figure. For causes that must involve narrative construction, Esther becomes a gestational carrier for one more of the Winslows’ daughters, and delivers to a male child, James, in 1941 – and the lion's share of this book is his narrative.

And now is where Irving’s fixations come roaring back, both regular and distinct. Jimmy relocates to – naturally – Vienna; there’s mention of dodging the military conscription through self-harm (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a canine with a meaningful name (Hard Rain, meet Sorrow from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, prostitutes, novelists and genitalia (Irving’s passim).

The character is a less interesting persona than Esther suggested to be, and the supporting characters, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s tutor Annelies Eissler, are flat also. There are several amusing scenes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a brawl where a couple of bullies get beaten with a crutch and a air pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not ever been a delicate writer, but that is is not the issue. He has consistently restated his points, hinted at plot developments and let them to accumulate in the viewer's imagination before taking them to completion in long, shocking, funny scenes. For example, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to go missing: think of the oral part in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces resonate through the story. In this novel, a key figure suffers the loss of an arm – but we merely find out 30 pages later the finish.

She returns toward the end in the novel, but just with a final feeling of concluding. We never discover the full story of her time in the Middle East. Queen Esther is a disappointment from a author who once gave such delight. That’s the negative aspect. The positive note is that Cider House – revisiting it alongside this novel – yet stands up wonderfully, four decades later. So pick up it instead: it’s double the length as this book, but 12 times as great.