Queen Esther by John Irving Evaluation – A Letdown Follow-up to His Classic Work

If a few authors have an imperial era, in which they hit the summit repeatedly, then American writer John Irving’s ran through a run of four substantial, satisfying books, from his 1978 success The World According to Garp to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Those were generous, humorous, warm novels, connecting protagonists he refers to as “outliers” to cultural themes from feminism to reproductive rights.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been waning results, except in word count. His last work, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was nine hundred pages long of themes Irving had explored better in prior works (selective mutism, restricted growth, trans issues), with a lengthy film script in the center to fill it out – as if filler were necessary.

Therefore we approach a recent Irving with caution but still a tiny glimmer of hope, which burns hotter when we discover that His Queen Esther Novel – a mere 432 pages long – “revisits the world of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties book is part of Irving’s finest books, located mostly in an children's home in the town of St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Wilbur Larch and his protege Homer.

This novel is a disappointment from a author who in the past gave such joy

In The Cider House Rules, Irving discussed termination and acceptance with richness, comedy and an total compassion. And it was a important book because it left behind the topics that were turning into annoying habits in his works: grappling, ursine creatures, Austrian capital, the oldest profession.

Queen Esther begins in the imaginary town of New Hampshire's Penacook in the twentieth century's dawn, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow welcome 14-year-old orphan the protagonist from the orphanage. We are a few years ahead of the action of His Earlier Novel, yet Dr Larch is still identifiable: still dependent on the drug, beloved by his nurses, starting every address with “In this place...” But his presence in Queen Esther is restricted to these early parts.

The couple fret about bringing up Esther properly: she’s Jewish, and “how could they help a young girl of Jewish descent discover her identity?” To answer that, we move forward to Esther’s adulthood in the 1920s. She will be part of the Jewish emigration to the region, where she will enter Haganah, the Zionist militant group whose “purpose was to safeguard Jewish settlements from hostile actions” and which would eventually become the foundation of the IDF.

Such are enormous subjects to take on, but having brought in them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s frustrating that the novel is hardly about the orphanage and Dr Larch, it’s still more disheartening that it’s additionally not focused on the main character. For causes that must relate to story mechanics, Esther turns into a substitute parent for another of the family's children, and bears to a male child, Jimmy, in World War II era – and the majority of this novel is Jimmy’s narrative.

And at this point is where Irving’s obsessions reappear loudly, both common and particular. Jimmy moves to – naturally – Vienna; there’s talk of avoiding the draft notice through self-mutilation (His Earlier Book); a pet with a symbolic designation (the dog's name, remember the earlier dog from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, sex workers, novelists and male anatomy (Irving’s passim).

Jimmy is a more mundane figure than the heroine promised to be, and the supporting players, such as young people Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s tutor Eissler, are underdeveloped as well. There are a few enjoyable set pieces – Jimmy deflowering; a fight where a few bullies get beaten with a support and a bicycle pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has not once been a subtle writer, but that is not the problem. He has consistently restated his ideas, telegraphed story twists and let them to accumulate in the viewer's mind before bringing them to resolution in long, jarring, amusing sequences. For case, in Irving’s works, anatomical features tend to disappear: think of the tongue in The Garp Novel, the finger in His Owen Book. Those losses echo through the story. In the book, a central person is deprived of an arm – but we just learn thirty pages before the end.

Esther returns toward the end in the story, but just with a eleventh-hour sense of wrapping things up. We do not do find out the complete story of her time in Palestine and Israel. This novel is a disappointment from a novelist who previously gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The good news is that His Classic Novel – I reread it together with this work – yet remains excellently, after forty years. So choose that as an alternative: it’s twice as long as the new novel, but a dozen times as great.