🔗 Share this article

If certain writers have an peak era, during which they achieve the heights consistently, then U.S. writer John Irving’s ran through a sequence of four substantial, satisfying works, from his 1978 hit His Garp Novel to 1989’s His Owen Meany Book. Those were expansive, funny, warm novels, connecting protagonists he refers to as “outliers” to societal topics from feminism to abortion.

Following A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing outcomes, save in page length. His last work, the 2022 release The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages in length of subjects Irving had explored better in prior novels (mutism, dwarfism, gender identity), with a lengthy script in the center to fill it out – as if extra material were necessary.

Thus we come to a recent Irving with care but still a small spark of optimism, which shines stronger when we learn that Queen Esther – a only 432 pages in length – “returns to the setting of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties book is part of Irving’s very best works, set primarily in an orphanage in Maine's St Cloud’s, operated by Dr Larch and his assistant Wells.

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

In Cider House, Irving discussed termination and acceptance with vibrancy, comedy and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a significant work because it abandoned the themes that were evolving into annoying tics in his works: wrestling, ursine creatures, the city of Vienna, prostitution.

The novel opens in the made-up town of New Hampshire's Penacook in the twentieth century's dawn, where the Winslow couple adopt young orphan the protagonist from St Cloud's home. We are a few years before the events of Cider House, yet Wilbur Larch remains recognisable: already addicted to anesthetic, beloved by his nurses, opening every speech with “In this place...” But his appearance in the book is limited to these early scenes.

The couple are concerned about parenting Esther well: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how could they help a adolescent Jewish girl find herself?” To tackle that, we jump ahead to Esther’s later life in the Roaring Twenties. She will be involved of the Jewish exodus to the region, where she will enter the Haganah, the Zionist armed organisation whose “purpose was to protect Jewish settlements from Arab attacks” and which would later establish the foundation of the Israeli Defense Forces.

These are enormous subjects to address, but having brought in them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s disappointing that Queen Esther is hardly about the orphanage and the doctor, it’s all the more upsetting that it’s also not focused on Esther. For reasons that must connect to narrative construction, Esther turns into a surrogate mother for a different of the family's children, and bears to a son, James, in World War II era – and the bulk of this book is his story.

And at this point is where Irving’s fixations come roaring back, both typical and particular. Jimmy moves to – where else? – the city; there’s mention of evading the Vietnam draft through bodily injury (Owen Meany); a pet with a significant name (the dog's name, recall the canine from His Hotel Novel); as well as the sport, sex workers, authors and male anatomy (Irving’s recurring).

Jimmy is a duller figure than the heroine hinted to be, and the minor characters, such as pupils the pair, and Jimmy’s instructor the tutor, are one-dimensional too. There are several amusing set pieces – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a brawl where a couple of bullies get beaten with a crutch and a bicycle pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has not once been a nuanced writer, but that is is not the problem. He has repeatedly restated his points, hinted at narrative turns and allowed them to gather in the audience's imagination before taking them to fruition in extended, shocking, amusing moments. For example, in Irving’s works, body parts tend to go missing: recall the oral part in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces resonate through the narrative. In Queen Esther, a central figure suffers the loss of an upper extremity – but we just discover 30 pages the conclusion.

The protagonist returns toward the end in the story, but just with a last-minute feeling of ending the story. We not once do find out the complete story of her life in Palestine and Israel. This novel is a failure from a author who once gave such pleasure. That’s the negative aspect. The positive note is that Cider House – I reread it together with this novel – even now remains wonderfully, after forty years. So read the earlier work instead: it’s double the length as this book, but far as enjoyable.