Queen Esther by John Irving Analysis – A Disappointing Sequel to His Classic Work

If some novelists experience an imperial era, where they achieve the summit time after time, then American author John Irving’s ran through a sequence of several substantial, satisfying books, from his late-seventies success Garp to 1989’s Owen Meany. Those were rich, humorous, warm novels, connecting characters he describes as “outliers” to cultural themes from gender equality to reproductive rights.

Following Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing results, except in size. His last book, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was 900 pages in length of topics Irving had examined better in earlier novels (inability to speak, restricted growth, trans issues), with a two-hundred-page film script in the center to extend it – as if padding were needed.

Therefore we look at a recent Irving with care but still a small flame of optimism, which burns stronger when we learn that His Queen Esther Novel – a just four hundred thirty-two pages – “returns to the setting of His Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties novel is one of Irving’s finest novels, set mostly in an children's home in St Cloud’s, Maine, managed by Dr Larch and his protege Homer Wells.

The book is a letdown from a writer who in the past gave such delight

In The Cider House Rules, Irving discussed abortion and identity with vibrancy, comedy and an all-encompassing compassion. And it was a major book because it moved past the themes that were turning into tiresome patterns in his works: grappling, ursine creatures, Austrian capital, prostitution.

The novel begins in the made-up town of New Hampshire's Penacook in the twentieth century's dawn, where Thomas and Constance Winslow welcome teenage orphan the title character from St Cloud's home. We are a few generations ahead of the events of Cider House, yet Wilbur Larch remains familiar: still dependent on anesthetic, beloved by his nurses, opening every address with “In this place...” But his presence in the book is confined to these opening scenes.

The family fret about raising Esther correctly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how might they help a teenage Jewish female find herself?” To address that, we move forward to Esther’s adulthood in the twenties era. She will be a member of the Jewish migration to the area, where she will enter Haganah, the pro-Zionist armed organisation whose “purpose was to safeguard Jewish towns from opposition” and which would subsequently become the core of the IDF.

Those are enormous topics to take on, but having introduced them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is not really about St Cloud's and Wilbur Larch, it’s all the more upsetting that it’s also not really concerning the main character. For causes that must connect to story mechanics, Esther turns into a gestational carrier for another of the family's children, and bears to a baby boy, the boy, in the early forties – and the majority of this story is the boy's narrative.

And here is where Irving’s fixations come roaring back, both regular and particular. Jimmy relocates to – where else? – the city; there’s talk of evading the draft notice through bodily injury (Owen Meany); a pet with a symbolic designation (Hard Rain, remember the canine from His Hotel Novel); as well as wrestling, sex workers, novelists and penises (Irving’s passim).

He is a more mundane character than Esther promised to be, and the secondary players, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s instructor Eissler, are one-dimensional as well. There are a few nice scenes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a fight where a few ruffians get beaten with a crutch and a air pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has never been a subtle author, but that is isn't the problem. He has always reiterated his arguments, telegraphed plot developments and allowed them to build up in the reader’s mind before bringing them to resolution in extended, shocking, entertaining sequences. For instance, in Irving’s novels, physical elements tend to go missing: recall the tongue in The Garp Novel, the digit in His Owen Book. Those missing pieces reverberate through the plot. In the book, a major person loses an upper extremity – but we merely learn 30 pages before the finish.

She comes back in the final part in the book, but merely with a last-minute impression of ending the story. We not once learn the complete narrative of her experiences in the Middle East. Queen Esther is a failure from a writer who once gave such joy. That’s the downside. The positive note is that Cider House – I reread it alongside this novel – even now remains beautifully, 40 years on. So pick up it instead: it’s double the length as Queen Esther, but a dozen times as great.