🔗 Share this article

If a few authors have an imperial phase, in which they reach the heights repeatedly, then American author John Irving’s extended through a run of four substantial, rewarding books, from his 1978 success His Garp Novel to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. These were generous, funny, big-hearted works, tying protagonists he describes as “misfits” to social issues from feminism to abortion.

After His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been declining outcomes, except in size. His most recent work, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was 900 pages of themes Irving had delved into more effectively in prior books (mutism, restricted growth, trans issues), with a 200-page screenplay in the heart to pad it out – as if padding were necessary.

Thus we come to a new Irving with caution but still a tiny flame of optimism, which burns stronger when we learn that His Queen Esther Novel – a just four hundred thirty-two pages in length – “goes back to the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties work is part of Irving’s top-tier works, located primarily in an children's home in the town of St Cloud’s, operated by Dr Larch and his assistant Homer.

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

In The Cider House Rules, Irving wrote about termination and belonging with colour, humor and an total compassion. And it was a major book because it left behind the themes that were turning into repetitive tics in his works: grappling, bears, Austrian capital, the oldest profession.

Queen Esther opens in the imaginary community of the Penacook area in the beginning of the 1900s, where the Winslow couple adopt young foundling the protagonist from the orphanage. We are a a number of years prior to the action of Cider House, yet Dr Larch stays familiar: still addicted to ether, respected by his nurses, beginning every speech with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his appearance in this novel is confined to these initial scenes.

The couple worry about parenting Esther properly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how could they help a teenage Jewish female find herself?” To tackle that, we jump ahead to Esther’s adulthood in the twenties era. She will be involved of the Jewish exodus to the area, where she will enter Haganah, the Jewish nationalist paramilitary organisation whose “goal was to defend Jewish towns from hostile actions” and which would eventually form the core of the Israeli Defense Forces.

These are massive topics to address, but having brought in them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s frustrating that the novel is not actually about St Cloud's and Wilbur Larch, it’s all the more upsetting that it’s additionally not focused on Esther. For reasons that must connect to plot engineering, Esther becomes a surrogate mother for one more of the family's daughters, and gives birth to a son, Jimmy, in World War II era – and the bulk of this story is Jimmy’s story.

And here is where Irving’s fixations come roaring back, both regular and specific. Jimmy relocates to – naturally – the Austrian capital; there’s talk of evading the draft notice through self-mutilation (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a dog with a significant designation (the animal, remember the earlier dog from His Hotel Novel); as well as grappling, streetwalkers, authors and male anatomy (Irving’s recurring).

He is a more mundane persona than the female lead hinted to be, and the supporting figures, such as young people the pair, and Jimmy’s instructor the tutor, are flat too. There are some nice episodes – Jimmy deflowering; a confrontation where a couple of thugs get assaulted with a walking aid and a bicycle pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not ever been a nuanced author, but that is not the issue. He has always restated his points, telegraphed plot developments and allowed them to accumulate in the audience's thoughts before taking them to resolution in long, surprising, funny moments. For instance, in Irving’s works, body parts tend to be lost: recall the tongue in The Garp Novel, the digit in Owen Meany. Those losses resonate through the story. In this novel, a central person loses an upper extremity – but we just learn 30 pages later the end.

She comes back in the final part in the book, but only with a last-minute sense of wrapping things up. We never discover the complete account of her time in the region. Queen Esther is a disappointment from a writer who previously gave such pleasure. That’s the negative aspect. The good news is that The Cider House Rules – revisiting it in parallel to this novel – still stands up excellently, after forty years. So choose the earlier work instead: it’s twice as long as the new novel, but 12 times as good.