🔗 Share this article

If a few writers have an peak phase, in which they reach the pinnacle repeatedly, then American novelist John Irving’s lasted through a sequence of several substantial, satisfying works, from his 1978 breakthrough His Garp Novel to the 1989 release Owen Meany. Those were generous, witty, big-hearted novels, tying protagonists he calls “outliers” to cultural themes from feminism to termination.

Following Owen Meany, it’s been declining outcomes, aside from in page length. His last book, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was 900 pages in length of themes Irving had explored better in prior works (mutism, short stature, transgenderism), with a two-hundred-page film script in the middle to fill it out – as if padding were needed.

Therefore we approach a recent Irving with reservation but still a small spark of expectation, which glows brighter when we learn that Queen Esther – a only four hundred thirty-two pages in length – “revisits the world of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties work is one of Irving’s finest works, set mostly in an institution in the town of St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Larch and his assistant Homer.

The book is a letdown from a novelist who previously gave such joy

In The Cider House Rules, Irving explored termination and acceptance with colour, comedy and an all-encompassing compassion. And it was a important work because it left behind the themes that were turning into repetitive habits in his novels: wrestling, bears, the city of Vienna, sex work.

This book starts in the fictional community of the Penacook area in the twentieth century's dawn, where Thomas and Constance Winslow adopt teenage ward the title character from St Cloud’s. We are a several years ahead of the action of His Earlier Novel, yet the doctor remains familiar: already addicted to ether, adored by his nurses, opening every address with “In this place...” But his presence in Queen Esther is restricted to these initial parts.

The Winslows worry about parenting Esther correctly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how might they help a teenage Jewish female discover her identity?” To answer that, we move forward to Esther’s adulthood in the Roaring Twenties. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to Palestine, where she will join Haganah, the Jewish nationalist militant organisation whose “mission was to safeguard Jewish settlements from opposition” and which would subsequently form the basis of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Those are enormous themes to tackle, but having introduced them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s disappointing that the novel is not actually about St Cloud's and Dr Larch, it’s all the more disappointing that it’s additionally not focused on the titular figure. For reasons that must involve story mechanics, Esther becomes a gestational carrier for a different of the Winslows’ children, and gives birth to a male child, the boy, in the early forties – and the majority of this novel is his story.

And at this point is where Irving’s obsessions reappear loudly, both typical and particular. Jimmy moves to – of course – the city; there’s mention of dodging the military conscription through bodily injury (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a pet with a significant designation (Hard Rain, remember the earlier dog from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, prostitutes, authors and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

Jimmy is a duller figure than the female lead hinted to be, and the minor figures, such as young people the pair, and Jimmy’s teacher Annelies Eissler, are one-dimensional too. There are some enjoyable scenes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a fight where a handful of ruffians get battered with a crutch and a bicycle pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has never been a subtle writer, but that is isn't the issue. He has always repeated his points, hinted at plot developments and allowed them to accumulate in the audience's mind before taking them to resolution in lengthy, shocking, amusing scenes. For case, in Irving’s works, body parts tend to be lost: think of the oral part in Garp, the digit in His Owen Book. Those losses reverberate through the plot. In Queen Esther, a central person loses an limb – but we only learn thirty pages the end.

She returns in the final part in the story, but just with a last-minute feeling of concluding. We not once discover the full narrative of her experiences in the Middle East. Queen Esther is a failure from a writer who once gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The good news is that Cider House – upon rereading alongside this novel – still holds up beautifully, four decades later. So choose that instead: it’s much longer as this book, but a dozen times as great.