John Irving's Queen Esther Evaluation – A Letdown Sequel to The Cider House Rules

If a few writers have an peak period, during which they achieve the heights time after time, then U.S. writer John Irving’s extended through a sequence of several substantial, satisfying novels, from his late-seventies success The World According to Garp to the 1989 release Owen Meany. Those were generous, witty, big-hearted novels, connecting protagonists he refers to as “outsiders” to societal topics from women's rights to reproductive rights.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been declining outcomes, save in page length. His previous book, the 2022 release His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages in length of subjects Irving had delved into more skillfully in prior novels (inability to speak, short stature, gender identity), with a two-hundred-page film script in the middle to pad it out – as if extra material were required.

Thus we come to a recent Irving with caution but still a tiny flame of hope, which glows hotter when we learn that Queen Esther – a only four hundred thirty-two pages in length – “returns to the universe of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 work is among Irving’s very best novels, set largely in an children's home in Maine's St Cloud’s, run by Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Homer.

The book is a disappointment from a novelist who in the past gave such delight

In The Cider House Rules, Irving discussed abortion and belonging with richness, wit and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a major work because it abandoned the subjects that were becoming repetitive tics in his novels: wrestling, wild bears, Vienna, prostitution.

The novel opens in the made-up community of Penacook, New Hampshire in the twentieth century's dawn, where Thomas and Constance Winslow welcome teenage orphan the protagonist from St Cloud's home. We are a a number of generations prior to the action of Cider House, yet the doctor stays identifiable: even then dependent on ether, beloved by his nurses, starting every speech with “In this place...” But his role in the book is restricted to these initial scenes.

The family worry about bringing up Esther correctly: she’s Jewish, and “how might they help a teenage Jewish female understand her place?” To tackle that, we move forward to Esther’s adulthood in the twenties era. She will be part of the Jewish exodus to the area, where she will become part of the paramilitary group, the pro-Zionist paramilitary group whose “mission was to protect Jewish towns from opposition” and which would eventually become the core of the Israel's military.

These are massive subjects to address, but having brought in them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s frustrating that the novel is not actually about the orphanage and Wilbur Larch, it’s still more disheartening that it’s additionally not focused on the titular figure. For reasons that must relate to narrative construction, Esther becomes a substitute parent for another of the couple's offspring, and delivers to a baby boy, Jimmy, in the early forties – and the bulk of this story is his story.

And at this point is where Irving’s obsessions return strongly, both regular and specific. Jimmy relocates to – where else? – Vienna; there’s talk of evading the military conscription through self-harm (His Earlier Book); a pet with a significant name (the animal, meet Sorrow from His Hotel Novel); as well as the sport, streetwalkers, authors and male anatomy (Irving’s passim).

He is a duller figure than the heroine suggested to be, and the minor characters, such as students Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s instructor Annelies Eissler, are underdeveloped too. There are a few nice set pieces – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a brawl where a few thugs get beaten with a crutch and a tire pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not once been a nuanced writer, but that is not the problem. He has repeatedly restated his points, hinted at narrative turns and let them to accumulate in the audience's thoughts before taking them to resolution in extended, jarring, entertaining moments. For case, in Irving’s works, body parts tend to disappear: recall the oral part in Garp, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those losses resonate through the story. In Queen Esther, a central person loses an arm – but we merely find out 30 pages later the conclusion.

Esther reappears toward the end in the story, but merely with a final sense of ending the story. We never do find out the full story of her time in the Middle East. The book is a failure from a author who once gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The upside is that The Cider House Rules – I reread it together with this book – still stands up wonderfully, after forty years. So choose the earlier work in its place: it’s double the length as Queen Esther, but far as enjoyable.