🔗 Share this article

If certain authors have an peak era, during which they hit the summit consistently, then U.S. author John Irving’s lasted through a run of several substantial, rewarding books, from his late-seventies success Garp to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. These were expansive, witty, compassionate novels, linking protagonists he describes as “outsiders” to societal topics from gender equality to termination.

Following His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been waning outcomes, aside from in page length. His previous book, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was nine hundred pages in length of themes Irving had explored better in previous novels (inability to speak, short stature, transgenderism), with a lengthy script in the heart to pad it out – as if padding were necessary.

Therefore we approach a latest Irving with care but still a faint spark of expectation, which glows stronger when we find out that His Queen Esther Novel – a just four hundred thirty-two pages in length – “revisits the world of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties work is part of Irving’s very best novels, set mostly in an institution in St Cloud’s, Maine, run by Dr Larch and his assistant Wells.

The book is a letdown from a author who once gave such delight

In The Cider House Rules, Irving explored abortion and acceptance with vibrancy, wit and an all-encompassing understanding. And it was a important work because it moved past the themes that were turning into tiresome habits in his works: grappling, bears, the city of Vienna, the oldest profession.

Queen Esther starts in the imaginary town of Penacook, New Hampshire in the early 20th century, where the Winslow couple adopt teenage foundling the protagonist from St Cloud’s. We are a a number of generations ahead of the storyline of The Cider House Rules, yet Wilbur Larch stays familiar: even then addicted to the drug, respected by his nurses, beginning every speech with “At St Cloud's...” But his appearance in the book is limited to these early scenes.

The family fret about bringing up Esther properly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how could they help a young Jewish girl understand her place?” To answer that, we flash forward to Esther’s later life in the Roaring Twenties. She will be a member of the Jewish emigration to the region, where she will become part of the paramilitary group, the Zionist armed group whose “purpose was to safeguard Jewish towns from hostile actions” and which would later become the core of the IDF.

Such are huge themes to tackle, but having introduced them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s disappointing that Queen Esther is not actually about the orphanage and Dr Larch, it’s even more disappointing that it’s likewise not focused on Esther. For reasons that must relate to story mechanics, Esther turns into a substitute parent for one more of the couple's offspring, and bears to a male child, James, in the early forties – and the bulk of this story is Jimmy’s story.

And here is where Irving’s preoccupations come roaring back, both regular and distinct. Jimmy relocates to – naturally – the Austrian capital; there’s talk of avoiding the military conscription through self-mutilation (His Earlier Book); a pet with a significant designation (Hard Rain, remember the canine from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, sex workers, authors and penises (Irving’s passim).

He 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 too. There are a few amusing 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 brief.

Irving has not ever been a nuanced novelist, but that is is not the problem. He has repeatedly reiterated his points, telegraphed narrative turns and let them to accumulate in the audience's imagination before leading them to resolution in extended, jarring, funny scenes. For instance, in Irving’s books, anatomical features tend to go missing: think of the speech organ in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those losses resonate through the plot. In the book, a key character suffers the loss of an limb – but we only learn 30 pages the end.

The protagonist reappears in the final part in the book, but only with a eleventh-hour sense of ending the story. We do not discover the entire narrative of her experiences in the region. Queen Esther is a disappointment from a novelist who once gave such pleasure. That’s the negative aspect. The good news is that Cider House – I reread it alongside this book – yet holds up beautifully, four decades later. So read the earlier work as an alternative: it’s double the length as the new novel, but far as enjoyable.