🔗 Share this article

If certain novelists have an imperial era, during which they reach the pinnacle time after time, then U.S. writer John Irving’s ran through a sequence of four long, satisfying books, from his late-seventies success The World According to Garp to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. Those were rich, witty, compassionate books, tying figures he refers to as “outliers” to social issues from women's rights to termination.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been waning outcomes, save in word count. His previous book, 2022’s The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages of themes Irving had examined better in prior novels (selective mutism, dwarfism, trans issues), with a two-hundred-page screenplay in the middle to extend it – as if extra material were required.

So we look at a latest Irving with care but still a small glimmer of optimism, which shines hotter when we discover that His Queen Esther Novel – a mere 432 pages in length – “goes back to the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties novel is part of Irving’s very best novels, located largely in an children's home in the town of St Cloud’s, managed by Wilbur Larch and his assistant Homer.

This novel is a failure from a novelist who once gave such pleasure

In The Cider House Rules, Irving discussed abortion and belonging with colour, humor and an total empathy. And it was a important work because it moved past the themes that were evolving into repetitive tics in his works: grappling, ursine creatures, Austrian capital, prostitution.

This book begins in the fictional town of New Hampshire's Penacook in the twentieth century's dawn, where Thomas and Constance Winslow take in young ward Esther from St Cloud’s. We are a several decades before the storyline of The Cider House Rules, yet the doctor stays identifiable: still dependent on anesthetic, beloved by his staff, opening every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his appearance in this novel is restricted to these early parts.

The family fret about parenting Esther correctly: she’s Jewish, and “in what way could they help a adolescent girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To address that, we move forward to Esther’s later life in the 1920s. She will be involved of the Jewish migration to Palestine, where she will join Haganah, the Zionist armed force whose “mission was to protect Jewish settlements from hostile actions” and which would eventually establish the basis of the Israel's military.

Those are massive themes to take on, but having introduced them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s disappointing that the novel is hardly about St Cloud's and the doctor, it’s all the more upsetting that it’s also not focused on the main character. For motivations that must involve plot engineering, Esther ends up as a substitute parent for another of the family's children, and gives birth to a baby boy, James, in the early forties – and the majority of this book is his narrative.

And here is where Irving’s fixations come roaring back, both typical and particular. Jimmy moves to – naturally – Vienna; there’s talk of dodging the military conscription through bodily injury (Owen Meany); a canine with a significant designation (the dog's name, recall the canine from His Hotel Novel); as well as wrestling, sex workers, authors and penises (Irving’s recurring).

The character is a more mundane character than the female lead hinted to be, and the supporting figures, such as young people the pair, and Jimmy’s instructor Annelies Eissler, are one-dimensional too. There are some amusing scenes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a fight where a few thugs get battered with a walking aid and a air pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not once been a subtle writer, but that is isn't the problem. He has repeatedly reiterated his arguments, telegraphed narrative turns and let them to accumulate in the audience's thoughts before bringing them to completion in extended, surprising, entertaining scenes. For instance, in Irving’s novels, physical elements tend to go missing: remember the oral part in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces resonate through the narrative. In Queen Esther, a key figure is deprived of an arm – but we only discover 30 pages before the finish.

The protagonist comes back toward the end in the story, but merely with a final sense of concluding. We not once do find out the full account of her life in the Middle East. This novel is a disappointment from a novelist who in the past gave such pleasure. That’s the downside. The upside is that The Cider House Rules – upon rereading in parallel to this novel – even now stands up wonderfully, 40 years on. So pick up that as an alternative: it’s double the length as this book, but far as great.