🔗 Share this article

If certain novelists experience an peak era, where they achieve the heights consistently, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s ran through a series of four substantial, satisfying works, from his late-seventies hit Garp to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. Those were rich, witty, warm books, linking characters he refers to as “outliers” to social issues from women's rights to reproductive rights.

After Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing outcomes, except in page length. His last novel, the 2022 release The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages of themes Irving had explored better in previous novels (mutism, dwarfism, trans issues), with a 200-page screenplay in the heart to pad it out – as if extra material were required.

Thus we look at a recent Irving with reservation but still a tiny glimmer of hope, which burns stronger when we learn that His Queen Esther Novel – a mere four hundred thirty-two pages – “returns to the setting of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 novel is among Irving’s finest novels, taking place primarily in an institution in St Cloud’s, Maine, run by Dr Wilbur Larch and his protege Wells.

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

In The Cider House Rules, Irving explored pregnancy termination and belonging with vibrancy, wit and an all-encompassing understanding. And it was a major book because it moved past the themes that were evolving into annoying tics in his works: the sport of wrestling, bears, Austrian capital, sex work.

The novel starts in the fictional village of Penacook, New Hampshire in the twentieth century's dawn, where the Winslow couple adopt young foundling the title character from St Cloud's home. We are a several years prior to the action of The Cider House Rules, yet the doctor stays recognisable: even then dependent on the drug, adored by his caregivers, opening every address with “In this place...” But his role in the book is confined to these early sections.

The family worry about raising Esther correctly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how might they help a adolescent Jewish female discover her identity?” To answer that, we flash forward to Esther’s grown-up years in the twenties era. She will be part of the Jewish migration to the area, where she will join Haganah, the Jewish nationalist paramilitary organisation whose “mission was to defend Jewish communities from Arab attacks” and which would later become the core of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Such are massive themes to take on, but having brought in them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s frustrating that the novel is not really about St Cloud’s and the doctor, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s additionally not about Esther. For causes that must relate to story mechanics, Esther ends up as a gestational carrier for another of the Winslows’ children, and bears to a son, James, in 1941 – and the majority of this story is the boy's story.

And at this point is where Irving’s obsessions come roaring back, both common and specific. Jimmy relocates to – of course – the Austrian capital; there’s mention of avoiding the military conscription through self-harm (Owen Meany); a pet with a symbolic title (Hard Rain, recall the canine from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, prostitutes, authors and penises (Irving’s passim).

Jimmy is a less interesting character than the heroine promised to be, and the supporting figures, such as young people the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher Eissler, are flat as well. There are a few amusing scenes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a fight where a couple of ruffians get assaulted with a walking aid and a tire pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not once been a nuanced novelist, but that is is not the issue. He has always repeated his ideas, hinted at plot developments and let them to build up in the reader’s mind before leading them to fruition in extended, jarring, funny scenes. For instance, in Irving’s works, anatomical features tend to go missing: remember the tongue in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces echo through the story. In Queen Esther, a key figure is deprived of an limb – but we just learn thirty pages the conclusion.

She comes back late in the story, but just with a eleventh-hour sense of wrapping things up. We never discover the full story of her time in the Middle East. Queen Esther is a disappointment from a author who previously gave such joy. That’s the downside. The upside is that His Classic Novel – revisiting it in parallel to this work – still remains wonderfully, 40 years on. So read it in its place: it’s much longer as this book, but a dozen times as good.