🔗 Share this article

If certain authors enjoy an imperial period, during which they reach the pinnacle time after time, then U.S. writer John Irving’s ran through a run of four fat, gratifying books, from his late-seventies breakthrough His Garp Novel to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. These were expansive, witty, compassionate books, tying figures he refers to as “misfits” to cultural themes from feminism to abortion.

Following A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing outcomes, except in size. His most recent book, 2022’s The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages of topics Irving had delved into more skillfully in previous works (mutism, short stature, transgenderism), with a two-hundred-page screenplay in the heart to fill it out – as if filler were needed.

So we look at a latest Irving with care but still a small glimmer of hope, which glows hotter when we find out that Queen Esther – a only 432 pages in length – “goes back to the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties novel is among Irving’s finest works, located primarily in an children's home in St Cloud’s, Maine, run by Wilbur Larch and his assistant Homer Wells.

The book is a letdown from a author who once gave such joy

In Cider House, Irving explored abortion and identity with richness, comedy and an total compassion. And it was a important novel because it moved past the themes that were turning into annoying habits in his books: the sport of wrestling, wild bears, Vienna, prostitution.

The novel begins in the made-up community of New Hampshire's Penacook in the early 20th century, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow adopt teenage ward the title character from St Cloud’s. We are a few years before the events of His Earlier Novel, yet Wilbur Larch remains identifiable: still using ether, adored by his caregivers, opening every address with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his role in Queen Esther is confined to these initial scenes.

The family are concerned about raising Esther properly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how could they help a teenage Jewish female discover her identity?” To answer that, we jump ahead to Esther’s later life in the twenties era. She will be a member of the Jewish emigration to the area, where she will enter the Haganah, the Jewish nationalist armed organisation whose “mission was to safeguard Jewish towns from opposition” and which would eventually establish the core of the Israel's military.

These are enormous topics to tackle, but having introduced them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s disappointing that the novel is not actually about St Cloud's and Dr Larch, it’s even more upsetting that it’s also not focused on the titular figure. For motivations that must involve plot engineering, Esther turns into a gestational carrier for a different of the couple's children, and bears to a baby boy, Jimmy, in World War II era – and the bulk of this novel is his tale.

And now is where Irving’s fixations come roaring back, both typical and distinct. Jimmy goes to – naturally – the Austrian capital; there’s talk of dodging the military conscription through bodily injury (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a pet with a meaningful title (Hard Rain, recall Sorrow from His Hotel Novel); as well as wrestling, sex workers, authors and penises (Irving’s throughout).

He is a less interesting character than the heroine suggested to be, and the minor characters, such as students Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s teacher Annelies Eissler, are underdeveloped also. There are a few nice scenes – Jimmy deflowering; a brawl where a few thugs get assaulted with a crutch and a tire pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has never been a subtle writer, but that is not the difficulty. He has always restated his points, foreshadowed plot developments and let them to accumulate in the audience's imagination before bringing them to fruition in extended, shocking, entertaining moments. For instance, in Irving’s books, physical elements tend to go missing: think of the speech organ in Garp, the digit in His Owen Book. Those losses echo through the narrative. In this novel, a key figure is deprived of an upper extremity – but we merely learn thirty pages before the conclusion.

She comes back in the final part in the novel, but merely with a last-minute impression of wrapping things up. We not once learn the complete account of her time in the region. This novel is a letdown from a novelist who previously gave such delight. That’s the negative aspect. The upside is that The Cider House Rules – revisiting it in parallel to this novel – yet stands up wonderfully, after forty years. So pick up the earlier work as an alternative: it’s much longer as the new novel, but a dozen times as good.