John Irving's Queen Esther Review – An Underwhelming Follow-up to The Cider House Rules

If certain writers enjoy an golden period, in which they hit the heights repeatedly, then American novelist John Irving’s extended through a series of several substantial, satisfying works, from his late-seventies hit The World According to Garp to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Those were generous, funny, warm novels, linking protagonists he calls “misfits” to societal topics from gender equality to reproductive rights.

Since Owen Meany, it’s been waning outcomes, save in word count. His previous work, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages long of themes Irving had explored more effectively in earlier works (inability to speak, restricted growth, trans issues), with a two-hundred-page film script in the heart to fill it out – as if padding were necessary.

Therefore we come to a new Irving with caution but still a small spark of optimism, which shines brighter when we discover that Queen Esther – a just four hundred thirty-two pages long – “revisits the world of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties work is one of Irving’s finest novels, taking place mostly in an children's home in Maine's St Cloud’s, operated by Dr Wilbur Larch and his protege Homer Wells.

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

In The Cider House Rules, Irving wrote about pregnancy termination and identity with vibrancy, wit and an comprehensive compassion. And it was a significant novel because it moved past the subjects that were becoming annoying patterns in his books: the sport of wrestling, bears, Austrian capital, the oldest profession.

Queen Esther begins in the fictional village of Penacook, New Hampshire in the beginning of the 1900s, where Thomas and Constance Winslow adopt young orphan Esther from St Cloud's home. We are a few years before the action of His Earlier Novel, yet Dr Larch stays recognisable: still addicted to anesthetic, respected by his nurses, beginning every talk with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his presence in Queen Esther is limited to these early sections.

The family fret about parenting Esther correctly: she’s Jewish, and “how could they help a teenage girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To answer that, we jump ahead to Esther’s grown-up years in the twenties era. She will be part of the Jewish exodus to Palestine, where she will become part of the Haganah, the Jewish nationalist paramilitary organisation whose “purpose was to protect Jewish settlements from Arab attacks” and which would eventually form the basis of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Such are massive topics to tackle, but having brought in them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s frustrating that this book is not really about St Cloud's and the doctor, it’s still more disappointing that it’s additionally not focused on the titular figure. For causes that must relate to narrative construction, Esther turns into a substitute parent for another of the family's daughters, and gives birth to a male child, Jimmy, in World War II era – and the bulk of this story is his narrative.

And now is where Irving’s fixations return strongly, both typical and specific. Jimmy relocates to – naturally – the Austrian capital; there’s mention of avoiding the draft notice through self-mutilation (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a dog with a significant name (the dog's name, remember the earlier dog from His Hotel Novel); as well as the sport, sex workers, authors and penises (Irving’s recurring).

The character is a less interesting figure than Esther promised to be, and the secondary players, such as students the pair, and Jimmy’s instructor the tutor, are one-dimensional too. There are several enjoyable episodes – Jimmy deflowering; a brawl where a handful of ruffians get battered with a walking aid and a bicycle pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not once been a subtle novelist, but that is not the difficulty. He has consistently reiterated his ideas, foreshadowed narrative turns and enabled them to accumulate in the audience's thoughts before taking them to completion in lengthy, surprising, amusing sequences. For instance, in Irving’s works, anatomical features tend to disappear: recall the oral part in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces resonate through the plot. In this novel, a key figure loses an upper extremity – but we just find out thirty pages later the end.

She returns in the final part in the novel, but merely with a final sense of concluding. We never discover the complete account of her experiences in the region. This novel is a failure from a writer who previously gave such pleasure. That’s the negative aspect. The upside is that Cider House – revisiting it alongside this novel – still remains wonderfully, 40 years on. So pick up the earlier work instead: it’s twice as long as the new novel, but a dozen times as enjoyable.