🔗 Share this article

If a few writers experience an peak period, in which they hit the pinnacle time after time, then U.S. writer John Irving’s extended through a sequence of four fat, gratifying books, from his late-seventies breakthrough His Garp Novel to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Such were rich, funny, big-hearted novels, linking figures he refers to as “outsiders” to cultural themes from women's rights to reproductive rights.

Since His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been waning returns, aside from in size. His most recent work, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages of topics Irving had delved into more effectively in prior books (selective mutism, dwarfism, transgenderism), with a lengthy screenplay in the center to extend it – as if filler were needed.

Therefore we approach a latest Irving with care but still a faint spark of optimism, which burns hotter when we find out that Queen Esther – a just four hundred thirty-two pages long – “returns to the world of The Cider House Rules”. That 1985 book is among Irving’s top-tier books, taking place largely in an children's home in Maine's St Cloud’s, run by Dr Wilbur Larch and his protege Homer Wells.

Queen Esther is a failure from a novelist who in the past gave such joy

In His Cider House Novel, Irving discussed pregnancy termination and belonging with vibrancy, comedy and an all-encompassing compassion. And it was a major book because it abandoned the topics that were evolving into tiresome patterns in his books: wrestling, ursine creatures, the city of Vienna, the oldest profession.

The novel starts in the fictional village of New Hampshire's Penacook in the beginning of the 1900s, where Thomas and Constance Winslow welcome 14-year-old orphan Esther from St Cloud’s. We are a several generations prior to the action of Cider House, yet the doctor remains identifiable: already addicted to ether, adored by his staff, beginning every talk with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his presence in this novel is limited to these opening parts.

The family fret about raising Esther well: she’s from a Jewish background, and “in what way could they help a adolescent Jewish female understand her place?” To answer that, we jump ahead to Esther’s adulthood in the Roaring Twenties. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to the area, where she will become part of the paramilitary group, the Zionist militant group whose “purpose was to defend Jewish settlements from opposition” and which would subsequently become the foundation of the IDF.

Such are huge topics to tackle, but having introduced them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s regrettable that Queen Esther is not really about the orphanage and Wilbur Larch, it’s all the more disappointing that it’s additionally not really concerning the titular figure. For reasons that must relate to narrative construction, Esther becomes a substitute parent for another of the couple's offspring, and gives birth to a male child, Jimmy, in World War II era – and the majority of this novel is his tale.

And here is where Irving’s fixations reappear loudly, both typical and particular. Jimmy relocates to – naturally – the city; there’s talk of avoiding the military conscription through self-mutilation (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a dog with a significant designation (the dog's name, meet the earlier dog from His Hotel Novel); as well as grappling, prostitutes, novelists and genitalia (Irving’s recurring).

Jimmy is a less interesting persona than the heroine hinted to be, and the minor figures, such as young people the pair, and Jimmy’s instructor Eissler, are underdeveloped as well. There are some amusing episodes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a fight where a handful of thugs get beaten with a support and a tire pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not ever been a nuanced author, but that is is not the difficulty. He has repeatedly restated his arguments, foreshadowed story twists and enabled them to gather in the viewer's thoughts before bringing them to resolution in extended, jarring, amusing sequences. For instance, in Irving’s books, physical elements tend to disappear: think of the speech organ in Garp, the finger in His Owen Book. Those losses echo through the story. In Queen Esther, a central person suffers the loss of an arm – but we just learn thirty pages later the conclusion.

The protagonist comes back in the final part in the story, but only with a final impression of concluding. We never do find out the entire account of her experiences in Palestine and Israel. This novel is a letdown from a novelist who previously gave such pleasure. That’s the downside. The good news is that Cider House – upon rereading in parallel to this work – even now holds up excellently, 40 years on. So pick up it instead: it’s twice as long as this book, but far as great.