🔗 Share this article

If some authors enjoy an golden phase, where they hit the pinnacle time after time, then U.S. author John Irving’s ran through a series of several long, satisfying novels, from his late-seventies hit His Garp Novel to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. Such were generous, witty, compassionate novels, connecting characters he refers to as “outsiders” to social issues from women's rights to reproductive rights.

After Owen Meany, it’s been declining returns, save in word count. His most recent novel, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages in length of themes Irving had examined more effectively in previous novels (inability to speak, restricted growth, gender identity), with a lengthy screenplay in the heart to extend it – as if extra material were required.

Thus we approach a recent Irving with caution but still a tiny spark of hope, which shines brighter when we find out that Queen Esther – a just four hundred thirty-two pages – “revisits the setting of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties novel is among Irving’s top-tier books, set mostly in an children's home in the town of St Cloud’s, managed by Wilbur Larch and his protege Wells.

This novel is a disappointment from a author who previously gave such delight

In Cider House, Irving wrote about pregnancy termination and identity with colour, comedy and an total compassion. And it was a significant work because it moved past the subjects that were becoming repetitive patterns in his novels: grappling, wild bears, Vienna, sex work.

This book begins in the fictional town of Penacook, New Hampshire in the beginning of the 1900s, where the Winslow couple adopt teenage orphan the protagonist from St Cloud’s. We are a a number of decades prior to the events of Cider House, yet Dr Larch stays familiar: already dependent on the drug, respected by his nurses, starting every speech with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his role in the book is restricted to these early scenes.

The Winslows worry about raising Esther correctly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “in what way could they help a young girl of Jewish descent understand her place?” To address that, we move forward to Esther’s adulthood in the Roaring Twenties. She will be involved of the Jewish exodus to the region, where she will enter Haganah, the Jewish nationalist armed force whose “purpose was to protect Jewish settlements from hostile actions” and which would eventually establish the basis of the Israel's military.

Such are massive subjects to take on, but having brought in them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s frustrating that the novel is not really about St Cloud's and Dr Larch, it’s all the more disappointing that it’s also not about the main character. For motivations that must involve story mechanics, Esther becomes a surrogate mother for a different of the Winslows’ daughters, and gives birth to a male child, James, in the early forties – and the majority of this story is his tale.

And at this point is where Irving’s obsessions reappear loudly, both regular and particular. Jimmy goes to – of course – the city; there’s talk of evading the military conscription through self-mutilation (Owen Meany); a canine with a meaningful designation (Hard Rain, remember the canine from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, sex workers, novelists and penises (Irving’s throughout).

The character is a more mundane figure than the heroine promised to be, and the minor characters, such as students the pair, and Jimmy’s instructor Annelies Eissler, are one-dimensional too. There are some nice set pieces – Jimmy losing his virginity; a confrontation where a few thugs get assaulted with a walking aid and a bicycle pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has never been a subtle author, but that is isn't the difficulty. He has consistently restated his points, telegraphed narrative turns and let them to build up in the viewer's imagination before leading them to completion in lengthy, jarring, entertaining scenes. For example, in Irving’s books, physical elements tend to disappear: think of the tongue in The Garp Novel, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those absences reverberate through the narrative. In this novel, a key character loses an limb – but we only learn 30 pages the end.

She returns late in the book, but merely with a final feeling of concluding. We never do find out the entire story of her time in Palestine and Israel. This novel is a disappointment from a writer who in the past gave such joy. That’s the downside. The positive note is that His Classic Novel – revisiting it in parallel to this work – still holds up excellently, four decades later. So read that instead: it’s twice as long as the new novel, but 12 times as great.