🔗 Share this article

If a few writers experience an golden era, where they achieve the summit repeatedly, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s lasted through a series of four long, rewarding works, from his 1978 hit The World According to Garp to 1989’s His Owen Meany Book. Such were expansive, humorous, compassionate books, linking characters he calls “outsiders” to societal topics from gender equality to abortion.

Since Owen Meany, it’s been waning results, aside from in page length. His most recent book, the 2022 release His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages in length of themes Irving had examined better in previous works (mutism, short stature, transgenderism), with a 200-page screenplay in the middle to extend it – as if padding were required.

Thus we approach a latest Irving with caution but still a faint flame of optimism, which shines hotter when we learn that Queen Esther – a just 432 pages in length – “goes back to the world of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 work is one of Irving’s top-tier books, taking place primarily in an children's home in Maine's St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Wells.

The book is a failure from a novelist who in the past gave such pleasure

In His Cider House Novel, Irving explored termination and identity with richness, comedy and an comprehensive compassion. And it was a significant book because it left behind the subjects that were turning into tiresome habits in his books: wrestling, ursine creatures, the city of Vienna, prostitution.

Queen Esther starts in the fictional town of New Hampshire's Penacook in the early 20th century, where the Winslow couple welcome young foundling Esther from the orphanage. We are a several generations ahead of the storyline of The Cider House Rules, yet the doctor remains familiar: even then using ether, beloved by his staff, beginning every speech with “In this place...” But his role in the book is confined to these initial sections.

The couple worry about raising Esther correctly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “in what way could they help a adolescent girl of Jewish descent discover her identity?” To address that, we move forward to Esther’s adulthood in the Roaring Twenties. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to the region, where she will become part of the paramilitary group, the Jewish nationalist paramilitary group whose “purpose was to safeguard Jewish settlements from opposition” and which would subsequently establish the core of the IDF.

These are huge topics to address, but having brought in them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s disappointing that Queen Esther is hardly about the orphanage and the doctor, it’s even more upsetting that it’s likewise not really concerning the main character. For causes that must involve story mechanics, Esther ends up as a surrogate mother for another of the Winslows’ daughters, and bears to a male child, the boy, in the early forties – and the bulk of this book is his story.

And at this point is where Irving’s obsessions come roaring back, both common and specific. Jimmy goes to – where else? – Vienna; there’s mention of dodging the draft notice through bodily injury (Owen Meany); a pet with a significant title (Hard Rain, meet the canine from His Hotel Novel); as well as grappling, prostitutes, authors and penises (Irving’s passim).

Jimmy is a less interesting character than the female lead promised to be, and the minor players, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher Eissler, are flat too. There are several enjoyable episodes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a confrontation where a handful of ruffians get beaten with a walking aid and a bicycle pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has never been a nuanced novelist, but that is not the issue. He has always restated his ideas, foreshadowed narrative turns and allowed them to build up in the reader’s thoughts before leading them to resolution in long, surprising, entertaining sequences. For example, in Irving’s novels, physical elements tend to be lost: think of the oral part in Garp, the finger in His Owen Book. Those missing pieces resonate through the story. In this novel, a key figure suffers the loss of an limb – but we merely learn thirty pages later the conclusion.

She reappears late in the book, but only with a eleventh-hour feeling of concluding. We never learn the full narrative of her experiences in the region. Queen Esther is a failure from a writer who in the past gave such pleasure. That’s the negative aspect. The good news is that His Classic Novel – I reread it in parallel to this work – yet remains excellently, after forty years. So pick up that in its place: it’s double the length as Queen Esther, but far as great.