Queen Esther by John Irving Evaluation – An Underwhelming Companion to His Earlier Masterpiece

If certain authors experience an golden era, during which they hit the pinnacle consistently, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s ran through a run of several fat, rewarding novels, from his 1978 success The World According to Garp to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. Those were expansive, funny, warm books, tying figures he calls “misfits” to social issues from feminism to reproductive rights.

Since His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been declining returns, except in size. His last book, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages long of topics Irving had examined more skillfully in earlier works (mutism, dwarfism, trans issues), with a two-hundred-page script in the heart to pad it out – as if padding were necessary.

Therefore we come to a recent Irving with reservation but still a tiny glimmer of expectation, which burns brighter when we find out that Queen Esther – a mere 432 pages – “returns to the universe of The Cider House Novel”. That 1985 work is one of Irving’s very best novels, set largely in an orphanage in Maine's St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Larch and his apprentice Homer.

This novel is a letdown from a writer who once gave such joy

In Cider House, Irving wrote about abortion and belonging with richness, humor and an comprehensive understanding. And it was a major work because it abandoned the subjects that were evolving into annoying habits in his works: the sport of wrestling, ursine creatures, Vienna, prostitution.

Queen Esther opens in the imaginary village of New Hampshire's Penacook in the beginning of the 1900s, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow welcome young orphan the protagonist from St Cloud’s. We are a a number of decades before the storyline of Cider House, yet Wilbur Larch is still identifiable: even then dependent on the drug, respected by his staff, beginning every speech with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his presence in Queen Esther is confined to these early scenes.

The family fret about parenting Esther well: she’s of Jewish faith, and “in what way could they help a teenage girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To tackle that, we flash forward to Esther’s grown-up years in the 1920s. She will be a member of the Jewish migration to the region, where she will join the Haganah, the Jewish nationalist paramilitary group whose “mission was to protect Jewish communities from Arab attacks” and which would eventually establish the foundation of the Israeli Defense Forces.

These are huge topics to tackle, but having brought in them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is not actually about St Cloud’s and the doctor, it’s even more upsetting that it’s additionally not focused on the main character. For motivations that must relate to story mechanics, Esther ends up as a surrogate mother for one more of the Winslows’ offspring, and gives birth to a son, James, in 1941 – and the majority of this book is his story.

And here is where Irving’s obsessions reappear loudly, both regular and particular. Jimmy moves to – of course – the Austrian capital; there’s talk of avoiding the draft notice through self-harm (His Earlier Book); a pet with a symbolic designation (Hard Rain, recall the earlier dog from His Hotel Novel); as well as the sport, prostitutes, writers and penises (Irving’s passim).

Jimmy is a less interesting character than the female lead suggested to be, and the supporting characters, such as young people the pair, and Jimmy’s tutor Annelies Eissler, are flat as well. There are several nice scenes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a fight where a handful of bullies get beaten with a walking aid and a air pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not once been a nuanced writer, but that is not the problem. He has repeatedly repeated his ideas, hinted at plot developments and allowed them to build up in the audience's mind before taking them to completion in long, jarring, entertaining sequences. For instance, in Irving’s novels, physical elements tend to go missing: recall the oral part in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those absences reverberate through the narrative. In this novel, a key character loses an upper extremity – but we just learn thirty pages before the finish.

Esther returns late in the book, but only with a final impression of wrapping things up. We do not discover the entire narrative of her life in the Middle East. The book is a failure from a writer who previously gave such delight. That’s the negative aspect. The good news is that The Cider House Rules – revisiting it together with this novel – even now remains wonderfully, four decades later. So choose the earlier work instead: it’s twice as long as the new novel, but far as good.