Queen Esther by John Irving Analysis – A Letdown Companion to His Classic Work

If a few writers experience an golden era, in which they reach the heights consistently, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s lasted through a sequence of several fat, satisfying works, from his 1978 success The World According to Garp to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. Such were rich, witty, warm books, linking characters he refers to as “outliers” to cultural themes from feminism to termination.

After His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been waning outcomes, save in word count. His most recent work, 2022’s The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages of themes Irving had delved into more skillfully in previous works (selective mutism, restricted growth, gender identity), with a lengthy film script in the center to extend it – as if extra material were needed.

So we approach a new Irving with care but still a faint flame of optimism, which shines hotter when we find out that Queen Esther – a just 432 pages in length – “goes back to the setting of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties novel is one of Irving’s very best works, located mostly in an children's home in St Cloud’s, Maine, managed by Dr Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Wells.

This novel is a letdown from a writer who previously gave such joy

In His Cider House Novel, Irving discussed abortion and acceptance with colour, comedy and an all-encompassing compassion. And it was a significant book because it moved past the topics that were evolving into annoying patterns in his books: grappling, ursine creatures, Austrian capital, sex work.

Queen Esther opens in the fictional town of New Hampshire's Penacook in the twentieth century's dawn, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow adopt young ward Esther from St Cloud’s. We are a few decades before the action of His Earlier Novel, yet Wilbur Larch is still recognisable: even then dependent on the drug, beloved by his nurses, starting every talk with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his appearance in this novel is limited to these opening parts.

The family worry about parenting Esther properly: she’s Jewish, and “how might they help a adolescent girl of Jewish descent discover her identity?” To tackle that, we move forward to Esther’s grown-up years in the 1920s. She will be part of the Jewish emigration to Palestine, where she will enter the paramilitary group, the Jewish nationalist armed organisation whose “goal was to protect Jewish communities from opposition” and which would subsequently establish the foundation of the Israeli Defense Forces.

These are huge subjects to tackle, but having brought in them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s regrettable that the novel is not actually about St Cloud’s and Wilbur Larch, it’s still more disheartening that it’s also not really concerning the main character. For causes that must involve plot engineering, Esther turns into a surrogate mother for one more of the family's children, and gives birth to a male child, Jimmy, in 1941 – and the bulk of this book is his tale.

And at this point is where Irving’s preoccupations come roaring back, both common and distinct. Jimmy relocates to – naturally – Vienna; there’s talk of dodging the draft notice through self-harm (Owen Meany); a pet with a symbolic name (the dog's name, remember the canine from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, streetwalkers, novelists and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

He is a duller character than the female lead hinted to be, and the supporting figures, such as pupils the two students, and Jimmy’s instructor Annelies Eissler, are flat also. There are several enjoyable scenes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a brawl where a handful of ruffians get battered with a crutch and a bicycle pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has not ever been a nuanced author, but that is is not the issue. He has repeatedly reiterated his points, hinted at narrative turns and allowed them to build up in the reader’s imagination before bringing them to fruition in lengthy, shocking, funny scenes. For case, in Irving’s novels, physical elements tend to go missing: think of the speech organ in The Garp Novel, the finger in Owen Meany. Those losses reverberate through the narrative. In Queen Esther, a major figure suffers the loss of an limb – but we just learn thirty pages before the finish.

Esther reappears late in the novel, but just with a final feeling of concluding. We never do find out the complete story of her experiences in Palestine and Israel. This novel is a disappointment from a writer who once gave such pleasure. That’s the negative aspect. The good news is that The Cider House Rules – I reread it in parallel to this book – yet remains wonderfully, 40 years on. So choose that instead: it’s twice as long as this book, but far as good.