John Irving's Queen Esther Review – A Letdown Companion to His Classic Work

If certain authors have an golden era, during which they reach the pinnacle repeatedly, then American novelist John Irving’s lasted through a series of several substantial, rewarding works, from his 1978 hit His Garp Novel to 1989’s Owen Meany. These were rich, humorous, warm books, tying protagonists he calls “outsiders” to cultural themes from women's rights to abortion.

Following Owen Meany, it’s been waning returns, save in word count. His last work, the 2022 release His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages long of topics Irving had explored better in earlier novels (inability to speak, dwarfism, transgenderism), with a 200-page screenplay in the heart to fill it out – as if filler were required.

Therefore we approach a recent Irving with reservation but still a tiny spark of expectation, which burns brighter when we find out that Queen Esther – a just 432 pages in length – “revisits the universe of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties novel is among Irving’s finest books, taking place mostly in an orphanage in Maine's St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Wilbur Larch and his protege Homer.

This novel is a failure from a writer who in the past gave such pleasure

In His Cider House Novel, Irving discussed pregnancy termination and belonging with richness, comedy and an total empathy. And it was a major novel because it moved past the topics that were becoming tiresome habits in his novels: wrestling, bears, the city of Vienna, sex work.

This book begins in the made-up village of New Hampshire's Penacook in the twentieth century's dawn, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow adopt teenage orphan the protagonist from St Cloud’s. We are a few generations before the storyline of His Earlier Novel, yet the doctor remains recognisable: already dependent on ether, beloved by his nurses, opening every address with “In this place...” But his role in this novel is restricted to these initial parts.

The family worry about raising Esther well: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how might they help a teenage girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To tackle that, we jump ahead to Esther’s later life in the 1920s. She will be involved of the Jewish migration to the region, where she will join the Haganah, the Zionist militant organisation whose “mission was to safeguard Jewish towns from hostile actions” and which would subsequently establish the basis 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 this book is not really about St Cloud’s and Dr Larch, it’s all the more disappointing that it’s also 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 couple's offspring, and delivers to a son, James, in 1941 – and the bulk of this book is his tale.

And here is where Irving’s fixations come roaring back, both regular and specific. Jimmy goes to – naturally – the city; there’s talk of evading the Vietnam draft through self-mutilation (Owen Meany); a dog with a meaningful designation (Hard Rain, recall Sorrow from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, streetwalkers, authors and genitalia (Irving’s recurring).

He is a more mundane figure than the female lead promised to be, and the supporting figures, such as students Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s tutor Annelies Eissler, are one-dimensional as well. There are several enjoyable episodes – Jimmy deflowering; a fight where a couple of ruffians get battered with a walking aid and a air pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not once been a nuanced writer, but that is not the difficulty. He has always reiterated his arguments, hinted at story twists and let them to gather in the reader’s thoughts before leading them to fruition in extended, surprising, funny scenes. For instance, in Irving’s works, physical elements tend to go missing: think of the oral part in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those absences reverberate through the story. In Queen Esther, a major figure loses an upper extremity – but we just discover thirty pages the conclusion.

Esther reappears toward the end in the novel, but merely with a last-minute feeling of concluding. We never learn the entire narrative of her time in the region. Queen Esther is a disappointment from a author who in the past gave such joy. That’s the negative aspect. The positive note is that His Classic Novel – revisiting it alongside this work – even now holds up excellently, 40 years on. So read that instead: it’s much longer as this book, but a dozen times as good.