The fact that Queen Esther isn’t a masterpiece seems neither surprising nor, frankly, the point. What’s most wonderful about Queen Esther is that it returns us to the St. Cloud’s orphanage immortalized in Irving’s magnificent 1985 novel, The Cider House Rules ... Offers as many false starts as spring in Maine ... In the basement of this book, there’s a thrilling story about a woman fighting for the establishment and then the defense of the modern state of Israel ... This may be a story about the education of a novelist, but I don’t think I’ve ever read a novel that struggles so long to cohere. That failing feels all the more disappointing considering the masterful structure of The Cider House Rules, which, despite a long, lumpy plot, always finds its way home ... Flawed.
His latest lacks the addictive propulsion of [his] early novels and is plagued by an at-times infuriating repetition, but I couldn’t help rooting for it anyway. I needed this dose of old-school New England decency. Few skewer sanctimony quite like Irving at his best. More important: I fell in love, once again, with his people ... I’m grateful for this book, imperfections and all.
The themes of Queen Esther will be familiar to Mr. Irving’s many readers, who will also recognize his habit of intertwining fiction with personal history ... The reappearance of Esther gives the tale another twist, taking Jimmy to the heart of things. He has traveled a long way from Pennacook to experience his epiphany, one day in Jerusalem.
Wildly overlong, with plenty of room for self-indulgence ... The main and unexpected problem is that, sentence by sentence, the writing is weirdly terrible. Then again, the structure is pretty flawed too ... Terrible prose to wade through ... What makes this sadder still is that we do get odd flashes of Irving’s former glories.
Countless literary references, lyrical flourishes, and allusions add depth to the Dickensian motif as Irving brilliantly blends moral ambiguity and emotional truth in this essential addition to his oeuvre.
Settling into another of his novels feels like stepping into a beloved pair of slippers. But, as he demonstrates in Queen Esther, that sense of homecoming shouldn't distract readers from the insight and empathy that have consistently characterized his work, including this tenderhearted bildungsroman ... A gentle story about identity and family, the one we're born into and the one that, if we're fortunate, grows organically out a lifetime of loving relationships. It clearly reflects John Irving's compassion and generosity of spirit, recognizing our flaws while still focusing on what's best in us.
This long churn of a novel is stuffed with the usual cutesy Irvingisms ... The book can be amusing and its underlying themes of identity and belonging, survival and personal freedom sometimes resonate. But Irving’s treatment of antisemitism comes awfully close to being another stunt. A sequel for committed Irving fans only.
