🔗 Share this article

If a few novelists enjoy an imperial phase, during which they reach the summit repeatedly, then American novelist John Irving’s extended through a series of four long, rewarding works, from his late-seventies hit His Garp Novel to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. These were expansive, humorous, warm books, tying characters he describes as “outliers” to societal topics from feminism to termination.

Since Owen Meany, it’s been declining outcomes, aside from in size. His most recent work, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages in length of subjects Irving had explored more effectively in earlier novels (mutism, short stature, trans issues), with a two-hundred-page film script in the heart to extend it – as if extra material were required.

So we approach a latest Irving with care but still a small spark of hope, which glows brighter when we discover that Queen Esther – a only four hundred thirty-two pages long – “revisits the setting of The Cider House Rules”. That 1985 novel is part of Irving’s top-tier novels, located largely in an orphanage in Maine's St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Larch and his assistant Homer Wells.

The book is a disappointment from a novelist who previously gave such pleasure

In His Cider House Novel, Irving explored abortion and identity with colour, wit and an total empathy. And it was a major work because it left behind the topics that were turning into tiresome habits in his novels: grappling, bears, the city of Vienna, prostitution.

This book opens in the fictional community of New Hampshire's Penacook in the twentieth century's dawn, where the Winslow couple welcome young orphan the title character from St Cloud's home. We are a several years before the storyline of The Cider House Rules, yet Wilbur Larch stays identifiable: already using anesthetic, respected by his staff, beginning every talk with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his appearance in this novel is restricted to these initial sections.

The couple fret about bringing up Esther correctly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “in what way could they help a young Jewish girl find herself?” To tackle that, we flash forward to Esther’s later life in the 1920s. She will be a member of the Jewish migration to Palestine, where she will enter the Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary organisation whose “goal was to safeguard Jewish communities from hostile actions” and which would eventually become the foundation of the IDF.

Those are enormous topics to address, but having brought in them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s disappointing that the novel is hardly about the orphanage and Wilbur Larch, it’s still more disheartening that it’s also not about the main character. For causes that must involve narrative construction, Esther ends up as a surrogate mother for a different of the family's offspring, and delivers to a baby boy, Jimmy, in the early forties – and the lion's share of this book is his narrative.

And at this point is where Irving’s preoccupations return strongly, both common and particular. Jimmy goes to – of course – Vienna; there’s discussion of evading the Vietnam draft through bodily injury (His Earlier Book); a dog with a meaningful name (the dog's name, remember the canine from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, streetwalkers, authors and penises (Irving’s passim).

Jimmy is a more mundane figure than the female lead suggested to be, and the minor players, such as pupils the pair, and Jimmy’s teacher Annelies Eissler, are one-dimensional too. There are several nice episodes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a confrontation where a handful of bullies get battered with a walking aid and a bicycle pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has not ever been a nuanced author, but that is not the difficulty. He has repeatedly reiterated his arguments, foreshadowed plot developments and allowed them to gather in the audience's thoughts before taking them to resolution in lengthy, shocking, funny scenes. For instance, in Irving’s novels, physical elements tend to go missing: recall the speech organ in The Garp Novel, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces resonate through the plot. In the book, a key figure is deprived of an upper extremity – but we merely find out thirty pages before the conclusion.

The protagonist returns in the final part in the book, but merely with a final impression of wrapping things up. We never discover the complete account of her experiences in the Middle East. This novel is a failure from a writer who once gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The upside is that The Cider House Rules – upon rereading in parallel to this work – yet remains beautifully, after forty years. So pick up the earlier work in its place: it’s twice as long as this book, but far as good.