🔗 Share this article

If a few novelists experience an golden period, where they reach the pinnacle repeatedly, then American novelist John Irving’s ran through a sequence of several substantial, satisfying works, from his late-seventies breakthrough The World According to Garp to the 1989 release Owen Meany. Such were rich, humorous, big-hearted works, connecting figures he calls “outsiders” to social issues from gender equality to reproductive rights.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been waning outcomes, save in word count. His last book, the 2022 release His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages long of subjects Irving had examined better in earlier works (inability to speak, short stature, trans issues), with a two-hundred-page screenplay in the middle to extend it – as if extra material were needed.

Therefore we look at a new Irving with care but still a tiny glimmer of hope, which shines hotter when we find out that His Queen Esther Novel – a just 432 pages long – “returns to the setting of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 work is part of Irving’s finest books, taking place mostly in an children's home in St Cloud’s, Maine, run by Dr Larch and his apprentice Homer Wells.

The book is a letdown from a writer who in the past gave such pleasure

In Cider House, Irving discussed termination and acceptance with colour, comedy and an comprehensive understanding. And it was a major novel because it moved past the themes that were turning into repetitive habits in his works: grappling, bears, Austrian capital, the oldest profession.

This book opens in the fictional town of Penacook, New Hampshire in the beginning of the 1900s, where the Winslow couple welcome young ward the title character from the orphanage. We are a a number of decades before the events of The Cider House Rules, yet the doctor stays recognisable: still using the drug, adored by his caregivers, beginning every address with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his presence in the book is limited to these opening parts.

The couple are concerned about bringing up Esther well: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how could they help a adolescent Jewish girl discover her identity?” To answer that, we flash forward to Esther’s later life in the Roaring Twenties. She will be part of the Jewish exodus to the region, where she will become part of the Haganah, the pro-Zionist paramilitary organisation whose “purpose was to safeguard Jewish towns from hostile actions” and which would later establish the foundation of the Israel's military.

These are enormous topics to tackle, but having presented them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s regrettable that Queen Esther is hardly about St Cloud’s and the doctor, it’s all the more upsetting that it’s also not focused on Esther. For causes that must connect to narrative construction, Esther turns into a gestational carrier for another of the Winslows’ daughters, and delivers to a son, the boy, in 1941 – and the majority of this book is the boy's narrative.

And at this point is where Irving’s preoccupations come roaring back, both typical and particular. Jimmy relocates to – of course – the Austrian capital; there’s discussion of dodging the draft notice through self-mutilation (Owen Meany); a pet with a significant designation (the animal, meet the earlier dog from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, prostitutes, authors and penises (Irving’s throughout).

Jimmy is a duller persona than the female lead hinted to be, and the minor players, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher the tutor, are one-dimensional too. There are some nice scenes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a confrontation where a few thugs get beaten with a walking aid and a tire pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has not once been a delicate author, but that is is not the difficulty. He has repeatedly repeated his ideas, telegraphed narrative turns and let them to gather in the viewer's thoughts before taking them to fruition in long, jarring, entertaining scenes. For case, in Irving’s works, physical elements tend to be lost: remember the tongue in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces echo through the story. In this novel, a major character loses an upper extremity – but we only learn 30 pages the finish.

Esther comes back late in the book, but merely with a eleventh-hour feeling of wrapping things up. We not once learn the complete account of her life in the region. This novel is a disappointment from a author who once gave such joy. That’s the bad news. The good news is that His Classic Novel – I reread it together with this novel – still holds up wonderfully, 40 years on. So pick up that instead: it’s much longer as the new novel, but 12 times as great.