John Irving's Queen Esther Evaluation – An Underwhelming Companion to The Cider House Rules

If a few writers have an golden period, where they reach the heights repeatedly, then American novelist John Irving’s ran through a run of several long, rewarding novels, from his 1978 success The World According to Garp to the 1989 release Owen Meany. These were generous, funny, big-hearted works, linking protagonists he describes as “outliers” to social issues from women's rights to reproductive rights.

Since Owen Meany, it’s been declining results, aside from in word count. His last book, the 2022 release The Last Chairlift, was nine hundred pages long of subjects Irving had examined more skillfully in previous books (mutism, restricted growth, transgenderism), with a lengthy screenplay in the heart to fill it out – as if filler were needed.

Therefore we look at a latest Irving with caution but still a faint flame of hope, which shines hotter when we discover that His Queen Esther Novel – a just 432 pages – “goes back to the setting of The Cider House Rules”. That 1985 work is part of Irving’s very best works, located mostly in an children's home in Maine's St Cloud’s, managed by Wilbur Larch and his assistant Wells.

Queen Esther is a failure from a author who in the past gave such joy

In His Cider House Novel, Irving discussed pregnancy termination and acceptance with vibrancy, wit and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a important book because it abandoned the subjects that were becoming repetitive patterns in his novels: wrestling, ursine creatures, Vienna, prostitution.

The novel begins in the imaginary town of Penacook, New Hampshire in the beginning of the 1900s, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow take in teenage orphan the title character from St Cloud’s. We are a several generations before the action of Cider House, yet the doctor is still familiar: even then addicted to the drug, beloved by his caregivers, starting every talk with “In this place...” But his presence in Queen Esther is confined to these opening scenes.

The family are concerned about raising Esther well: she’s from a Jewish background, and “in what way could they help a adolescent girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To answer that, we move forward to Esther’s adulthood in the 1920s. She will be part of the Jewish exodus to Palestine, where she will become part of Haganah, the Zionist armed force whose “purpose was to protect Jewish settlements from Arab attacks” and which would eventually establish the basis of the Israel's military.

These are enormous subjects to address, but having presented them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is not actually about St Cloud’s and Wilbur Larch, it’s even more upsetting that it’s likewise not focused on the main character. For reasons that must involve plot engineering, Esther turns into a substitute parent for a different of the couple's children, and bears to a son, Jimmy, in 1941 – and the majority of this story is his tale.

And now is where Irving’s preoccupations reappear loudly, both regular and specific. Jimmy goes to – naturally – Vienna; there’s talk of dodging the Vietnam draft through self-harm (Owen Meany); a canine with a symbolic title (the animal, remember the canine from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, prostitutes, novelists and penises (Irving’s throughout).

He is a duller figure than Esther promised to be, and the secondary characters, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s instructor the tutor, are one-dimensional too. There are several enjoyable scenes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a fight where a handful of ruffians get battered with a support and a tire pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not once been a subtle novelist, but that is not the difficulty. He has always repeated his points, hinted at narrative turns and let them to gather in the viewer's mind before leading them to fruition in long, jarring, funny moments. For case, in Irving’s books, physical elements tend to go missing: recall the tongue in The Garp Novel, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those losses resonate through the plot. In the book, a central character is deprived of an arm – but we merely discover thirty pages before the finish.

Esther comes back late in the story, but just with a final impression of wrapping things up. We never learn the complete narrative of her time in the Middle East. The book is a failure from a novelist who previously gave such delight. That’s the bad news. The upside is that Cider House – I reread it in parallel to this work – yet remains wonderfully, after forty years. So read that in its place: it’s much longer as Queen Esther, but 12 times as great.