🔗 Share this article

If a few novelists experience an golden era, where they reach the summit time after time, then American author John Irving’s extended through a run of four fat, satisfying works, from his late-seventies breakthrough Garp to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Such were generous, funny, warm novels, connecting protagonists he calls “outsiders” to social issues from women's rights to reproductive rights.

After His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been diminishing outcomes, except in page length. His most recent novel, the 2022 release His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages in length of subjects Irving had delved into more effectively in previous works (mutism, dwarfism, gender identity), with a 200-page film script in the middle to fill it out – as if extra material were required.

Therefore we look at a new Irving with care but still a tiny spark of optimism, which burns hotter when we find out that His Queen Esther Novel – a mere 432 pages in length – “revisits the setting of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 work is among Irving’s very best novels, set mostly in an orphanage in the town of St Cloud’s, operated by Dr Wilbur Larch and his protege Homer.

This novel is a letdown from a writer who previously gave such joy

In Cider House, Irving wrote about termination and identity with colour, humor and an comprehensive empathy. And it was a significant book because it left behind the subjects that were becoming annoying habits in his novels: wrestling, ursine creatures, Austrian capital, prostitution.

This book starts in the imaginary community of the Penacook area in the beginning of the 1900s, where the Winslow couple take in 14-year-old foundling the protagonist from St Cloud’s. We are a a number of decades before the storyline of Cider House, yet Wilbur Larch remains familiar: still dependent on ether, respected by his nurses, starting every speech with “At St Cloud's...” But his presence in the book is restricted to these initial parts.

The couple are concerned about raising Esther properly: she’s Jewish, and “how could they help a young Jewish female discover her identity?” To tackle that, we jump ahead to Esther’s grown-up years in the twenties era. She will be part of the Jewish migration to the area, where she will become part of the paramilitary group, the Zionist militant group whose “goal was to safeguard Jewish towns from Arab attacks” and which would later form the core of the Israel's military.

Such are enormous topics to tackle, but having presented them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s disappointing that the novel is hardly about St Cloud’s and the doctor, it’s still more upsetting that it’s also not focused on Esther. For causes that must involve story mechanics, Esther ends up as a surrogate mother for another of the Winslows’ children, and bears to a baby boy, the boy, in the early forties – and the majority of this story is Jimmy’s narrative.

And now is where Irving’s preoccupations return strongly, both regular and distinct. Jimmy relocates to – where else? – the Austrian capital; there’s talk of avoiding the military conscription through self-mutilation (Owen Meany); a canine with a meaningful title (the dog's name, recall Sorrow from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, streetwalkers, authors and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

He is a duller character than the female lead promised to be, and the secondary players, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s instructor Eissler, are underdeveloped as well. There are some enjoyable scenes – Jimmy deflowering; a brawl where a handful of bullies get assaulted with a support and a bicycle pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not once been a delicate author, but that is isn't the problem. He has always restated his arguments, hinted at narrative turns and allowed them to accumulate in the audience's mind before leading them to resolution in long, jarring, entertaining sequences. For instance, in Irving’s works, anatomical features tend to go missing: recall the tongue in The Garp Novel, the digit in Owen Meany. Those losses resonate through the narrative. In Queen Esther, a central person loses an arm – but we only discover 30 pages later the finish.

She reappears toward the end in the novel, but just with a last-minute impression of concluding. We never discover the complete account of her life in the region. Queen Esther is a letdown from a novelist who once gave such pleasure. That’s the downside. The good news is that His Classic Novel – revisiting it together with this novel – yet holds up wonderfully, 40 years on. So pick up it instead: it’s much longer as this book, but far as enjoyable.