🔗 Share this article

If a few writers experience an peak period, during which they achieve the pinnacle consistently, then American novelist John Irving’s extended through a sequence of several substantial, rewarding books, from his 1978 hit Garp to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Such were rich, funny, big-hearted works, tying characters he refers to as “outliers” to cultural themes from women's rights to abortion.

Following Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing outcomes, except in size. His last novel, the 2022 release The Last Chairlift, was nine hundred pages in length of themes Irving had explored more skillfully in earlier novels (mutism, restricted growth, gender identity), with a two-hundred-page film script in the heart to fill it out – as if filler were needed.

Thus we look at a recent Irving with care but still a small spark of hope, which burns brighter when we discover that Queen Esther – a mere four hundred thirty-two pages in length – “returns to the world of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties book is part of Irving’s very best works, set mostly in an orphanage in Maine's St Cloud’s, run by Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Homer Wells.

This novel is a failure from a writer who previously gave such joy

In His Cider House Novel, Irving discussed termination and identity with vibrancy, humor and an comprehensive empathy. And it was a major work because it abandoned the subjects that were becoming tiresome tics in his books: grappling, bears, the city of Vienna, sex work.

Queen Esther begins in the made-up village of the Penacook area in the beginning of the 1900s, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow take in teenage orphan the title character from the orphanage. We are a a number of decades ahead of the events of Cider House, yet the doctor is still recognisable: still dependent on anesthetic, beloved by his staff, opening every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his appearance in this novel is confined to these initial parts.

The couple are concerned about bringing up Esther well: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how might they help a young girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To answer that, we flash forward to Esther’s grown-up years in the twenties era. She will be part of the Jewish migration to Palestine, where she will join Haganah, the Zionist armed organisation whose “purpose was to defend Jewish towns from Arab attacks” and which would subsequently form the basis of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Such are enormous topics to address, but having presented them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s regrettable that this book is not actually about St Cloud’s and the doctor, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s additionally not about Esther. For motivations that must relate to story mechanics, Esther becomes a surrogate mother for one more of the couple's daughters, and gives birth to a baby boy, Jimmy, in 1941 – and the bulk of this story is the boy's tale.

And at this point is where Irving’s preoccupations return strongly, both common and specific. Jimmy moves to – where else? – the Austrian capital; there’s mention of evading the draft notice through self-mutilation (His Earlier Book); a dog with a meaningful name (the dog's name, recall Sorrow from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, streetwalkers, authors and penises (Irving’s throughout).

Jimmy is a duller persona than the female lead suggested to be, and the supporting characters, such as young people Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s teacher Eissler, are flat as well. There are several amusing set pieces – Jimmy losing his virginity; a brawl where a handful of ruffians get beaten with a crutch and a tire pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has never been a nuanced novelist, but that is is not the problem. He has always restated his ideas, foreshadowed story twists and allowed them to accumulate in the viewer's mind before leading them to completion in long, shocking, funny sequences. For instance, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to be lost: recall the tongue in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those absences echo through the story. In the book, a key character suffers the loss of an upper extremity – but we just learn 30 pages the conclusion.

Esther returns toward the end in the book, but merely with a eleventh-hour feeling of ending the story. We never discover the entire story of her time in the Middle East. The book is a disappointment from a writer who in the past gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The good news is that His Classic Novel – upon rereading alongside this novel – still stands up wonderfully, 40 years on. So read the earlier work in its place: it’s twice as long as the new novel, but far as good.