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

If a few authors have an golden phase, during which they hit the summit consistently, then American author John Irving’s lasted through a series of four long, satisfying works, from his late-seventies breakthrough The World According to Garp to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. Such were rich, humorous, warm works, tying characters he describes as “outsiders” to social issues from gender equality to termination.

After Owen Meany, it’s been waning returns, except in page length. His most recent novel, the 2022 release His Last Chairlift Novel, was 900 pages in length of themes Irving had examined more effectively in earlier novels (inability to speak, restricted growth, transgenderism), with a lengthy script in the middle to fill it out – as if extra material were required.

Therefore we approach a latest Irving with caution but still a faint spark of hope, which shines stronger when we discover that Queen Esther – a only 432 pages – “returns to the setting of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties novel is among Irving’s finest novels, set primarily in an children's home in Maine's St Cloud’s, operated by Dr Larch and his apprentice Homer.

Queen Esther is a failure from a author who once gave such pleasure

In His Cider House Novel, Irving wrote about pregnancy termination and identity with richness, humor and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a major work because it moved past the topics that were turning into annoying patterns in his books: grappling, bears, the city of Vienna, prostitution.

This book opens in the imaginary community of New Hampshire's Penacook in the early 20th century, where Thomas and Constance Winslow take in teenage foundling Esther from the orphanage. We are a several generations prior to the events of His Earlier Novel, yet the doctor stays identifiable: already addicted to the drug, adored by his nurses, beginning every talk with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his role in this novel is restricted to these early scenes.

The Winslows fret about bringing up Esther correctly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “in what way could they help a teenage Jewish female discover her identity?” To address that, we jump ahead to Esther’s adulthood in the twenties era. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to the region, where she will enter Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary group whose “purpose was to protect Jewish settlements from hostile actions” and which would later form the foundation of the IDF.

Those are enormous topics to tackle, but having introduced them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s regrettable that Queen Esther is not really about St Cloud’s and Dr Larch, it’s still more disheartening that it’s likewise not really concerning the main character. For causes that must connect to story mechanics, Esther ends up as a substitute parent for one more of the Winslows’ daughters, and delivers to a baby boy, Jimmy, in 1941 – and the lion's share of this book is the boy's story.

And here is where Irving’s fixations come roaring back, both common and particular. Jimmy goes to – where else? – the city; there’s talk of avoiding the draft notice through bodily injury (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a canine with a symbolic name (the animal, recall the canine from His Hotel Novel); as well as wrestling, streetwalkers, authors and penises (Irving’s recurring).

He is a less interesting character than the heroine promised to be, and the secondary figures, such as young people the two students, and Jimmy’s tutor the tutor, are one-dimensional as well. There are a few enjoyable set pieces – Jimmy deflowering; a fight where a couple of bullies get beaten with a crutch and a bicycle pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not once been a delicate author, but that is isn't the problem. He has repeatedly repeated his points, telegraphed narrative turns and let them to build up in the audience's imagination before leading them to fruition in extended, shocking, amusing scenes. For example, in Irving’s novels, physical elements tend to disappear: remember the tongue in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those absences resonate through the narrative. In this novel, a key person suffers the loss of an upper extremity – but we only find out thirty pages the end.

The protagonist returns late in the book, but only with a eleventh-hour feeling of concluding. We not once learn the full story of her experiences in the Middle East. This novel is a letdown from a novelist who once gave such pleasure. That’s the downside. The upside is that The Cider House Rules – I reread it together with this book – still stands up wonderfully, after forty years. So read the earlier work instead: it’s double the length as Queen Esther, but a dozen times as good.