Queen Esther by John Irving Analysis – A Disappointing Follow-up to His Earlier Masterpiece

If a few authors enjoy an golden era, in which they achieve the heights consistently, then American writer John Irving’s extended through a run of four long, gratifying novels, from his late-seventies success His Garp Novel to 1989’s Owen Meany. These were expansive, funny, warm books, connecting figures he describes as “outsiders” to social issues from women's rights to abortion.

Following Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing results, save in word count. His previous work, 2022’s The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages long of subjects Irving had examined more effectively in previous works (selective mutism, short stature, trans issues), with a two-hundred-page script in the heart to fill it out – as if padding were required.

So we approach a latest Irving with caution but still a small glimmer of optimism, which glows stronger when we learn that Queen Esther – a only 432 pages – “goes back to the setting of The Cider House Rules”. That 1985 work is one of Irving’s top-tier novels, located largely in an children's home in the town of St Cloud’s, operated by Dr Larch and his protege Homer.

This novel is a disappointment from a writer who previously gave such pleasure

In His Cider House Novel, Irving explored abortion and identity with richness, comedy and an total compassion. And it was a significant work because it left behind the themes that were becoming annoying tics in his works: grappling, wild bears, the city of Vienna, sex work.

The novel begins in the imaginary village of New Hampshire's Penacook in the twentieth century's dawn, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow take in teenage orphan Esther from St Cloud’s. We are a a number of generations ahead of the storyline of The Cider House Rules, yet Dr Larch stays familiar: even then using anesthetic, beloved by his nurses, starting every address with “In this place...” But his presence in the book is restricted to these opening sections.

The couple are concerned about bringing up Esther well: she’s from a Jewish background, and “in what way could they help a teenage girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To address that, we jump ahead to Esther’s grown-up years in the Roaring Twenties. She will be a member of the Jewish exodus to Palestine, where she will join the paramilitary group, the Jewish nationalist armed force whose “purpose was to defend Jewish towns from hostile actions” and which would eventually establish the foundation of the IDF.

These are enormous subjects to address, but having presented them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s disappointing that this book is not really about the orphanage and Dr Larch, it’s all the more upsetting that it’s additionally not really concerning the titular figure. For motivations that must involve plot engineering, Esther ends up as a gestational carrier for a different of the Winslows’ daughters, and gives birth to a son, James, in World War II era – and the lion's share of this story is the boy's story.

And now is where Irving’s preoccupations come roaring back, both regular and particular. Jimmy relocates to – of course – the Austrian capital; there’s mention of evading the draft notice through self-harm (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a dog with a meaningful title (Hard Rain, meet Sorrow from His Hotel Novel); as well as the sport, streetwalkers, novelists and penises (Irving’s throughout).

Jimmy is a duller persona than the heroine promised to be, and the supporting players, such as students Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s tutor the tutor, are flat also. There are some nice set pieces – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a fight where a few ruffians get beaten with a crutch and a tire pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not ever been a delicate novelist, but that is not the problem. He has repeatedly repeated his arguments, foreshadowed narrative turns and let them to accumulate in the reader’s thoughts before leading them to fruition in long, surprising, entertaining sequences. For case, in Irving’s novels, physical elements tend to go missing: recall the speech organ in Garp, the digit in His Owen Book. Those absences echo through the narrative. In the book, a key figure loses an upper extremity – but we merely learn thirty pages later the end.

The protagonist comes back in the final part in the book, but merely with a eleventh-hour sense of wrapping things up. We do not learn the complete account of her life in the Middle East. Queen Esther is a disappointment from a novelist who once gave such pleasure. That’s the downside. The upside is that His Classic Novel – upon rereading together with this book – still remains beautifully, after forty years. So choose that instead: it’s much longer as this book, but far as enjoyable.