🔗 Share this article

If some novelists have an peak phase, during which they reach the summit consistently, then American author John Irving’s lasted through a sequence of four long, satisfying works, from his late-seventies breakthrough The World According to Garp to the 1989 release Owen Meany. Such were expansive, funny, compassionate novels, connecting protagonists he describes as “outsiders” to societal topics from feminism to abortion.

After His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been declining results, except in size. His previous book, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was 900 pages of themes Irving had examined more skillfully in earlier novels (selective mutism, short stature, trans issues), with a 200-page script in the middle to extend it – as if extra material were necessary.

Therefore we come to a new Irving with caution but still a faint glimmer of expectation, which glows stronger when we find out that Queen Esther – a only four hundred thirty-two pages in length – “returns to the setting of His Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties book is one of Irving’s top-tier books, located mostly in an children's home in St Cloud’s, Maine, operated by Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Homer.

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

In The Cider House Rules, Irving explored pregnancy termination and acceptance with colour, comedy and an all-encompassing compassion. And it was a major novel because it left behind the themes that were becoming tiresome patterns in his works: wrestling, ursine creatures, the city of Vienna, sex work.

This book begins in the fictional community of the Penacook area in the early 20th century, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow take in 14-year-old foundling Esther from the orphanage. We are a several generations before the storyline of Cider House, yet Dr Larch remains identifiable: still addicted to anesthetic, respected by his nurses, beginning every talk with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his appearance in the book is confined to these opening parts.

The family fret about parenting Esther properly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “in what way could they help a adolescent girl of Jewish descent discover her identity?” To answer that, we move forward to Esther’s grown-up years in the twenties era. She will be part of the Jewish migration to the region, where she will become part of Haganah, the pro-Zionist armed group whose “goal was to protect Jewish settlements from Arab attacks” and which would later form the foundation of the Israel's military.

Such are enormous topics to tackle, but having introduced them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s disappointing that the novel is hardly about the orphanage and Dr Larch, it’s still more disheartening that it’s also not really concerning the titular figure. For causes that must involve narrative construction, Esther ends up as a surrogate mother for another of the Winslows’ offspring, and bears to a son, Jimmy, in 1941 – and the bulk of this story is his tale.

And here is where Irving’s preoccupations return strongly, both typical and distinct. Jimmy goes to – where else? – Vienna; there’s discussion of evading the draft notice through bodily injury (Owen Meany); a canine with a symbolic name (the animal, meet Sorrow from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, prostitutes, writers and male anatomy (Irving’s passim).

He is a less interesting character than the heroine suggested to be, and the minor figures, such as students the pair, and Jimmy’s instructor Annelies Eissler, are one-dimensional as well. There are some nice episodes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a confrontation where a couple of ruffians get assaulted with a support and a air pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not once been a delicate writer, but that is isn't the issue. He has repeatedly reiterated his ideas, foreshadowed story twists and let them to build up in the reader’s thoughts before bringing them to resolution in long, surprising, funny moments. For case, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to disappear: recall the tongue in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those absences reverberate through the narrative. In the book, a major person suffers the loss of an upper extremity – but we only learn 30 pages the end.

Esther reappears late in the book, but only with a final feeling of wrapping things up. We do not discover the full story of her experiences in the Middle East. The book is a failure from a novelist who previously gave such delight. That’s the bad news. The good news is that Cider House – revisiting it alongside this work – still stands up wonderfully, after forty years. So read the earlier work instead: it’s twice as long as this book, but far as good.