Book – Queen Esther

Author: John Irving,Publisher: Simon & SchusterReviewer: Brian Morgan

I spent much of the time whilst I was reading Queen Esther thinking that I had missed something in that I found that it took right until its conclusion for me to understand it.

I often found myself returning to my study of English in my teens and, in particular, writers such as Charles Dickens.  Dickens, the person and many of the characters in his books are referred to in Queen Esther, either directly or indirectly.

The main characters in this (fictional) story are a family of Jewish people. The parents and their daughters live in the United States. The approach to sexuality of the daughters is somewhat unusual for reasons which I will shortly explain.

Esther is one of the daughters. One of her sisters wants to have a child but does not want to conceive or carry it herself so Esther, after finding a suitable male to assist, agrees to do so.

The resulting son, James, grows up having two mothers but with virtually no knowledge of his actual father or, even, his birth mother.  As a young adult, he decides to travel to Vienna, at a time when the United States is conscripting young men for Vietnam. James determines that, if he becomes a “father”, he will be entitled to avoid conscription into the US armed forces which, after several hundred pages, he achieves.

He spends much of the book exploring his Jewish heritage; trying to develop a relationship with Esther; and looking for someone prepared to have his child so he can avoid the draft and develop into a writer along the lines of Dickens.

He continues his struggle to identify himself, his relationship with the mother of his daughter, a lesbian to whom he is actually married, his own birth mother, his Jewish birthright and his aunt who had raised him as her child.

All these very loose ends come together at the conclusion of Queen Esther in a way which made me, eventually, appreciate the book much more than I had during the reading when I struggled to understand where it was leading, so much so, that I was tempted, at times, to abandon the whole project.  

John Irving is not only a treasured novelist from a much earlier time but he won the Academy Award for best adapted screenplay for Cider House Rules at the 2000 Oscars. Indeed, I had read Cider House Rules, many years ago. Cider House Rules, published in 1985, is set largely at the St Clouds orphanage in Maine. The early pages of Queen Esther arealso set at St Clouds with both Irving and the reader recalling the fictional scenes from forty years earlier.

This is a serious work of fiction, rather than a book you could read in an hour on the train. In retrospect, I look upon it as a modern classic but some, like me, will struggle with it.

My major criticism is the pace at which it proceeds which, to my mind, was slow and cumbersome. Nonetheless, I invite readers to feel free to disagree.