John Irving's Queen Esther Evaluation – A Disappointing Companion to His Earlier Masterpiece

If certain writers experience an imperial era, where they achieve the heights time after time, then U.S. author John Irving’s ran through a sequence of four substantial, rewarding works, from his late-seventies hit Garp to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. These were expansive, humorous, warm works, tying characters he calls “misfits” to social issues from gender equality to reproductive rights.

Following His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been declining results, save in word count. His last novel, the 2022 release The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages in length of subjects Irving had delved into better in previous novels (inability to speak, restricted growth, trans issues), with a 200-page film script in the middle to fill it out – as if padding were needed.

So we approach a recent Irving with care but still a faint spark of hope, which shines stronger when we discover that Queen Esther – a only 432 pages – “revisits the setting of The Cider House Novel”. That 1985 work is one of Irving’s finest books, set primarily in an institution in Maine's St Cloud’s, operated by Dr Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Wells.

The book is a failure from a author who once gave such pleasure

In Cider House, Irving discussed termination and belonging with vibrancy, humor and an all-encompassing compassion. And it was a important book because it left behind the themes that were evolving into tiresome patterns in his works: wrestling, ursine creatures, the city of Vienna, the oldest profession.

Queen Esther begins in the made-up village of New Hampshire's Penacook in the twentieth century's dawn, where the Winslow couple welcome 14-year-old foundling the title character from St Cloud’s. We are a a number of years before the storyline of The Cider House Rules, yet Wilbur Larch is still familiar: even then addicted to anesthetic, adored by his staff, opening every speech with “At St Cloud's...” But his appearance in this novel is confined to these initial sections.

The Winslows fret about raising Esther well: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how might they help a young Jewish girl discover her identity?” To address that, we jump ahead to Esther’s later life in the Roaring Twenties. She will be involved of the Jewish migration to Palestine, where she will become part of the paramilitary group, the Jewish nationalist militant group whose “mission was to safeguard Jewish communities from Arab attacks” and which would later establish the foundation of the Israel's military.

Those are huge themes to tackle, but having introduced them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s disappointing that this book is not really about St Cloud's and Wilbur Larch, it’s even more disheartening that it’s additionally not about the main character. For reasons that must involve plot engineering, Esther becomes a gestational carrier for another of the family's offspring, and delivers to a baby boy, the boy, in World War II era – and the lion's share of this book is the boy's narrative.

And here is where Irving’s preoccupations come roaring back, both typical and specific. Jimmy goes to – naturally – the Austrian capital; there’s mention of avoiding the draft notice through self-harm (Owen Meany); a dog with a significant title (the animal, recall the canine from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, streetwalkers, authors and penises (Irving’s throughout).

Jimmy is a less interesting character than the female lead promised to be, and the supporting characters, such as pupils the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher Annelies Eissler, are flat also. There are a few enjoyable scenes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a confrontation where a handful of thugs get assaulted with a support and a air pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not once been a nuanced novelist, but that is not the difficulty. He has always restated his ideas, hinted at narrative turns and allowed them to build up in the reader’s mind before taking them to fruition in long, surprising, entertaining scenes. For case, in Irving’s books, physical elements tend to go missing: recall the tongue in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those losses resonate through the narrative. In this novel, a key character suffers the loss of an arm – but we just discover thirty pages before the finish.

She reappears late in the story, but just with a eleventh-hour feeling of concluding. We never discover the full narrative of her time in Palestine and Israel. The book is a failure from a novelist who in the past gave such delight. That’s the downside. The upside is that Cider House – I reread it in parallel to this book – still remains beautifully, after forty years. So read the earlier work instead: it’s twice as long as this book, but 12 times as great.