🔗 Share this article

If a few novelists enjoy an golden period, in which they hit the summit repeatedly, then American author John Irving’s lasted through a series of four long, gratifying works, from his late-seventies hit Garp to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. Such were generous, humorous, compassionate novels, connecting protagonists he calls “misfits” to cultural themes from feminism to reproductive rights.

After Owen Meany, it’s been declining results, except in size. His previous novel, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages of subjects Irving had delved into more effectively in earlier works (mutism, dwarfism, gender identity), with a 200-page script in the middle to fill it out – as if extra material were necessary.

So we approach a recent Irving with reservation but still a small spark of optimism, which glows stronger when we discover that Queen Esther – a only 432 pages – “returns to the setting of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 work is among Irving’s very best books, taking place primarily in an children's home in St Cloud’s, Maine, operated by Dr Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Wells.

This novel is a failure from a author who in the past gave such delight

In The Cider House Rules, Irving discussed termination and acceptance with colour, comedy and an comprehensive understanding. And it was a significant book because it left behind the themes that were becoming tiresome tics in his works: grappling, wild bears, the city of Vienna, prostitution.

This book starts in the made-up village of New Hampshire's Penacook in the early 20th century, where Thomas and Constance Winslow welcome teenage foundling the title character from the orphanage. We are a few years before the storyline of Cider House, yet Wilbur Larch stays recognisable: already addicted to the drug, beloved by his nurses, starting every speech with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his appearance in Queen Esther is limited to these early sections.

The family worry about parenting Esther correctly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “in what way could they help a adolescent girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To tackle that, we jump ahead to Esther’s adulthood in the Roaring Twenties. She will be a member of the Jewish emigration to the region, where she will enter the Haganah, the pro-Zionist paramilitary force whose “purpose was to protect Jewish communities from Arab attacks” and which would later form the foundation of the Israel's military.

These are enormous topics to tackle, but having presented them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s frustrating that the novel is hardly about St Cloud's and Wilbur Larch, it’s all the more disappointing that it’s also not about Esther. For motivations that must connect to story mechanics, Esther ends up as a gestational carrier for one more of the couple's offspring, and delivers to a male child, James, in 1941 – and the majority of this novel is Jimmy’s tale.

And now is where Irving’s preoccupations reappear loudly, both typical and distinct. Jimmy moves to – where else? – the Austrian capital; there’s mention of avoiding the military conscription through self-mutilation (His Earlier Book); a dog with a meaningful designation (the dog's name, meet the earlier dog from His Hotel Novel); as well as the sport, sex workers, writers and male anatomy (Irving’s passim).

He is a more mundane figure than the female lead suggested to be, and the secondary players, such as young people Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s instructor the tutor, are flat also. There are several nice episodes – Jimmy deflowering; a fight where a few thugs get beaten with a support and a tire pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not once been a delicate novelist, but that is isn't the problem. He has always restated his arguments, hinted at narrative turns and enabled them to gather in the reader’s imagination before leading them to fruition in long, shocking, amusing scenes. For instance, in Irving’s works, physical elements tend to be lost: recall the oral part in The Garp Novel, the hand part in His Owen Book. Those absences reverberate through the narrative. In the book, a major figure loses an limb – but we only find out thirty pages before the end.

Esther returns late in the book, but merely with a eleventh-hour sense of wrapping things up. We not once discover the complete narrative of her life in the Middle East. The book is a disappointment from a novelist who once gave such joy. That’s the negative aspect. The good news is that The Cider House Rules – revisiting it alongside this book – yet holds up excellently, four decades later. So pick up it in its place: it’s twice as long as this book, but a dozen times as good.