🔗 Share this article

If certain authors enjoy an golden phase, during which they hit the pinnacle time after time, then U.S. writer John Irving’s lasted through a sequence of four fat, gratifying books, from his 1978 breakthrough His Garp Novel to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. Such were rich, funny, big-hearted books, tying figures he describes as “misfits” to societal topics from feminism to reproductive rights.

Since Owen Meany, it’s been declining returns, except in word count. His last book, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages of themes Irving had examined better in prior novels (selective mutism, short stature, trans issues), with a 200-page script in the middle to pad it out – as if padding were required.

Therefore we approach a new Irving with care but still a faint spark of hope, which burns brighter when we find out that His Queen Esther Novel – a just 432 pages in length – “goes back to the world of His Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties book is part of Irving’s very best books, set primarily in an institution in Maine's St Cloud’s, run by Dr Larch and his assistant Homer Wells.

Queen Esther is a letdown from a writer who previously gave such joy

In His Cider House Novel, Irving wrote about pregnancy termination and identity with vibrancy, wit and an total compassion. And it was a important book because it abandoned the topics that were becoming tiresome patterns in his books: grappling, ursine creatures, Austrian capital, the oldest profession.

The novel begins in the fictional town of Penacook, New Hampshire in the twentieth century's dawn, where the Winslow couple take in teenage orphan the protagonist from the orphanage. We are a a number of years ahead of the action of His Earlier Novel, yet the doctor remains recognisable: already dependent on ether, beloved by his staff, starting every address with “In this place...” But his presence in the book is limited to these initial parts.

The family fret about bringing up Esther properly: she’s Jewish, and “in what way could they help a adolescent Jewish female understand her place?” To address that, we jump ahead to Esther’s adulthood in the twenties era. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to the area, where she will become part of the Haganah, the Zionist militant organisation whose “purpose was to protect Jewish settlements from Arab attacks” and which would eventually form the core of the IDF.

Such are massive topics to tackle, but having introduced them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is not really about the orphanage and Wilbur Larch, it’s still more disheartening that it’s also not really concerning Esther. For reasons that must relate to plot engineering, Esther becomes a gestational carrier for a different of the family's daughters, and delivers to a baby boy, the boy, in 1941 – and the bulk of this novel is the boy's story.

And at this point is where Irving’s preoccupations reappear loudly, both typical and particular. Jimmy relocates to – of course – the Austrian capital; there’s discussion of dodging the military conscription through self-mutilation (His Earlier Book); a canine with a symbolic designation (the dog's name, meet Sorrow from His Hotel Novel); as well as grappling, sex workers, writers and penises (Irving’s passim).

The character is a less interesting figure than the female lead suggested to be, and the secondary figures, such as students Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s teacher the tutor, are flat too. There are a few enjoyable scenes – Jimmy deflowering; a brawl where a couple of bullies get assaulted with a support and a air pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has not once been a subtle writer, but that is is not the issue. He has consistently reiterated his ideas, telegraphed narrative turns and let them to build up in the audience's mind before leading them to completion in lengthy, surprising, funny moments. For example, in Irving’s books, body parts tend to go missing: recall the speech organ in Garp, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces echo through the plot. In Queen Esther, a central character loses an arm – but we merely find out thirty pages later the finish.

Esther comes back in the final part in the novel, but merely with a final sense of wrapping things up. We never discover the complete narrative of her experiences in Palestine and Israel. The book is a letdown from a novelist who in the past gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The upside is that Cider House – upon rereading in parallel to this novel – even now remains beautifully, after forty years. So pick up the earlier work as an alternative: it’s much longer as Queen Esther, but far as good.