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

If a few writers have an golden period, in which they reach the heights consistently, then U.S. author John Irving’s ran through a series of four fat, gratifying books, from his 1978 hit His Garp Novel to 1989’s Owen Meany. These were expansive, funny, compassionate works, tying characters he refers to as “misfits” to societal topics from women's rights to termination.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been waning results, except in page length. His most recent book, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was nine hundred pages long of topics Irving had delved into better in previous novels (inability to speak, restricted growth, gender identity), with a two-hundred-page script in the middle to extend it – as if filler were required.

Therefore we approach a new Irving with caution but still a small glimmer of hope, which shines brighter when we learn that His Queen Esther Novel – a mere 432 pages in length – “revisits the universe of The Cider House Novel”. That 1985 book is part of Irving’s very best works, set primarily in an orphanage in the town of St Cloud’s, run by Dr Larch and his protege Homer Wells.

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

In Cider House, Irving explored pregnancy termination and identity with vibrancy, wit and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a important book because it left behind the topics that were evolving into tiresome tics in his books: the sport of wrestling, bears, Vienna, sex work.

The novel starts in the made-up town of New Hampshire's Penacook in the early 20th century, where Thomas and Constance Winslow welcome teenage ward Esther from St Cloud's home. We are a several generations before the events of His Earlier Novel, yet Wilbur Larch remains recognisable: already dependent on the drug, beloved by his caregivers, opening every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his presence in the book is limited to these early sections.

The couple worry about bringing up Esther correctly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how might they help a young Jewish girl discover her identity?” To answer that, we jump ahead to Esther’s later life in the 1920s. She will be involved of the Jewish migration to the area, where she will enter the Haganah, the Zionist armed force whose “mission was to protect Jewish communities from hostile actions” and which would eventually become the basis of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Those are huge topics to address, but having brought in them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s regrettable that Queen Esther is not actually about St Cloud's and Dr Larch, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s likewise not about Esther. For reasons that must relate to story mechanics, Esther ends up as a substitute parent for another of the Winslows’ daughters, and bears to a baby boy, James, in the early forties – and the lion's share of this story is Jimmy’s narrative.

And now is where Irving’s preoccupations come roaring back, both common and specific. Jimmy goes to – naturally – the city; there’s talk of evading the military conscription through bodily injury (Owen Meany); a pet with a symbolic name (the dog's name, recall Sorrow from His Hotel Novel); as well as the sport, sex workers, novelists and penises (Irving’s throughout).

He is a less interesting character than the female lead promised to be, and the supporting players, such as young people the pair, and Jimmy’s teacher Annelies Eissler, are one-dimensional too. There are a few enjoyable set pieces – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a fight where a handful of thugs get beaten with a walking aid and a bicycle pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has never been a delicate author, but that is is not the difficulty. He has always restated his ideas, hinted at plot developments and let them to accumulate in the reader’s imagination before leading them to completion in long, surprising, funny moments. For example, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to disappear: remember the oral part in The Garp Novel, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those losses reverberate through the narrative. In Queen Esther, a central figure suffers the loss of an arm – but we merely discover 30 pages later the end.

She comes back in the final part in the novel, but only with a eleventh-hour sense of concluding. We do not discover the complete narrative of her time in the region. This novel is a failure from a writer who in the past gave such pleasure. That’s the downside. The positive note is that The Cider House Rules – revisiting it alongside this novel – still stands up wonderfully, after forty years. So pick up the earlier work instead: it’s much longer as this book, but a dozen times as good.