🔗 Share this article

If some writers experience an peak phase, during which they achieve the summit time after time, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s ran through a run of four substantial, gratifying works, from his late-seventies success His Garp Novel to the 1989 release Owen Meany. These were rich, witty, big-hearted novels, connecting protagonists he calls “outsiders” to cultural themes from women's rights to termination.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing returns, except in word count. His last book, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was 900 pages long of themes Irving had explored more effectively in earlier books (selective mutism, restricted growth, gender identity), with a lengthy script in the center to extend it – as if filler were required.

Thus we come to a latest Irving with reservation but still a faint spark of hope, which shines brighter when we find out that His Queen Esther Novel – a mere 432 pages – “returns to the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties novel is part of Irving’s top-tier works, set mostly in an institution in St Cloud’s, Maine, managed by Dr Larch and his protege Wells.

This novel is a letdown from a author who once gave such pleasure

In His Cider House Novel, Irving explored abortion and belonging with colour, comedy and an total compassion. And it was a major work because it moved past the themes that were becoming annoying habits in his works: the sport of wrestling, ursine creatures, Vienna, sex work.

Queen Esther opens in the fictional community of the Penacook area in the early 20th century, where the Winslow couple adopt teenage orphan the protagonist from St Cloud’s. We are a several decades prior to the storyline of His Earlier Novel, yet the doctor is still identifiable: still addicted to ether, beloved by his staff, opening every address with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his presence in the book is confined to these opening parts.

The family worry about parenting Esther properly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how might they help a adolescent girl of Jewish descent discover her identity?” To address that, we move forward to Esther’s grown-up years in the Roaring Twenties. She will be part of the Jewish emigration to Palestine, where she will join the paramilitary group, the pro-Zionist armed organisation whose “mission was to safeguard Jewish towns from hostile actions” and which would later become the foundation of the IDF.

These are huge themes to take on, but having introduced them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s frustrating that this book is not actually about the orphanage and the doctor, it’s all the more disappointing that it’s also not really concerning the titular figure. For causes that must connect to story mechanics, Esther becomes a surrogate mother for another of the Winslows’ offspring, and gives birth to a baby boy, Jimmy, in 1941 – and the majority of this novel is his narrative.

And now is where Irving’s preoccupations come roaring back, both regular and specific. Jimmy relocates to – of course – the city; there’s discussion of dodging the military conscription through bodily injury (Owen Meany); a dog with a symbolic name (Hard Rain, remember Sorrow from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, sex workers, authors and penises (Irving’s recurring).

He is a more mundane persona than the heroine suggested to be, and the secondary players, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher Eissler, are flat too. There are a few amusing scenes – Jimmy deflowering; a confrontation where a handful of thugs get assaulted with a support and a bicycle pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not ever been a nuanced author, but that is isn't the problem. He has repeatedly repeated his arguments, foreshadowed story twists and enabled them to accumulate in the audience's mind before taking them to fruition in extended, jarring, funny scenes. For example, in Irving’s novels, physical elements tend to disappear: remember the oral part in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those losses echo through the story. In Queen Esther, a key figure loses an upper extremity – but we merely discover 30 pages the end.

She reappears late in the story, but merely with a eleventh-hour impression of wrapping things up. We do not discover the complete account of her time in Palestine and Israel. This novel is a disappointment from a novelist who once gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The positive note is that Cider House – I reread it alongside this work – yet remains wonderfully, 40 years on. So choose that as an alternative: it’s double the length as Queen Esther, but a dozen times as good.