🔗 Share this article

If some writers enjoy an peak phase, during which they achieve the heights repeatedly, then U.S. writer John Irving’s ran through a run of several long, gratifying novels, from his 1978 breakthrough The World According to Garp to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. Those were rich, humorous, warm books, linking characters he refers to as “outsiders” to cultural themes from feminism to abortion.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been declining returns, except in size. His last book, the 2022 release His Last Chairlift Novel, was 900 pages of topics Irving had explored better in previous novels (mutism, dwarfism, gender identity), with a 200-page script in the heart to extend it – as if extra material were required.

Thus we look at a recent Irving with reservation but still a faint glimmer of expectation, which burns stronger when we learn that Queen Esther – a just four hundred thirty-two pages long – “returns to the universe of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 work is among Irving’s very best books, taking place primarily in an orphanage in Maine's St Cloud’s, operated by Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Homer.

Queen Esther is a failure from a writer who previously gave such pleasure

In His Cider House Novel, Irving wrote about abortion and acceptance with colour, comedy and an all-encompassing compassion. And it was a major book because it moved past the subjects that were turning into repetitive habits in his books: wrestling, bears, the city of Vienna, sex work.

The novel begins in the made-up village of the Penacook area in the twentieth century's dawn, where Thomas and Constance Winslow take in young foundling Esther from St Cloud’s. We are a several decades prior to the events of Cider House, yet the doctor stays familiar: even then dependent on ether, beloved by his staff, starting every address with “In this place...” But his role in Queen Esther is restricted to these initial scenes.

The Winslows worry about bringing up Esther well: she’s of Jewish faith, and “in what way could they help a young Jewish female find herself?” To answer that, we jump ahead to Esther’s adulthood in the 1920s. She will be involved of the Jewish migration to the region, where she will enter the Haganah, the Zionist armed organisation whose “goal was to defend Jewish towns from opposition” and which would subsequently form the foundation of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Those are huge topics to tackle, but having introduced them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is not actually about St Cloud’s and Wilbur Larch, it’s still more disappointing that it’s likewise not really concerning the main character. For causes that must involve narrative construction, Esther becomes a gestational carrier for one more of the family's offspring, and gives birth to a son, Jimmy, in 1941 – and the lion's share of this novel is Jimmy’s tale.

And at this point is where Irving’s fixations return strongly, both regular and specific. Jimmy relocates to – where else? – Vienna; there’s mention of dodging the military conscription through self-mutilation (His Earlier Book); a canine with a meaningful designation (Hard Rain, meet the earlier dog from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, streetwalkers, writers and penises (Irving’s recurring).

Jimmy is a duller character than the female lead promised to be, and the minor characters, such as young people Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s teacher Eissler, are flat as well. There are some enjoyable episodes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a brawl where a couple of ruffians get battered with a support and a bicycle pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not once been a nuanced writer, but that is isn't the difficulty. He has always restated his ideas, foreshadowed narrative turns and enabled them to build up in the audience's imagination before bringing them to completion in extended, jarring, entertaining scenes. For case, in Irving’s works, anatomical features tend to disappear: recall the tongue in Garp, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those losses resonate through the narrative. In this novel, a central person loses an upper extremity – but we just learn thirty pages before the finish.

The protagonist returns toward the end in the novel, but just with a eleventh-hour sense of ending the story. We do not do find out the complete narrative of her time in Palestine and Israel. The book is a letdown from a writer who once gave such delight. That’s the downside. The good news is that His Classic Novel – revisiting it in parallel to this book – yet stands up wonderfully, four decades later. So choose it instead: it’s much longer as this book, but far as good.