Queen Esther by John Irving: A Book Review

John Irving has broken my heart before, but usually it’s because of the story. Queen Esther broke it for an entirely different reason.

Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars

Few things are more disappointing than feeling disconnected from a book by an author you love.

A bad book from a random writer is one thing. You shrug, move on. But when an author’s novels have meant something to you, the disappointment gets personal. That’s where I landed with John Irving’s Queen Esther.

Esther Nacht’s Story

Queen Esther is Irving’s 16th novel and a loose return to the world of The Cider House Rules — specifically, the St. Cloud’s orphanage in Maine, where Dr. Larch once presided. Esther Nacht was born in Vienna in 1905. Her father dies on the ship carrying the family to Portland, Maine. Antisemites murder her mother after they arrive. Dr. Larch takes her in, but can’t find anyone willing to adopt a Jewish child. When Esther is fourteen and close to aging out of the system, he meets the Winslows — a philanthropic New Hampshire family with a history of taking in kids no one else will.

The Winslows aren’t Jewish, but they despise antisemitism, and Esther’s gratitude to them shapes the rest of her life. Even as she searches for her roots and eventually returns to Vienna, she never stops protecting the family that chose her. The novel follows her across decades. By the final chapter, set in Jerusalem in 1981, she’s seventy-six.

All the Familiar Ingredients

Queen Esther has everything: unconventional families, complicated parenthood, sexuality, bodily autonomy, identity, and inherited trauma. Irving has always understood that families get made through loyalty and care as much as through blood, and that history doesn’t stay in the past — it follows people around.

These are rich ideas. On paper, this is exactly the kind of sweeping Irving novel I’d expect to fall into completely.

But I didn’t.

Where It Lost Me

The book has scope and intention, but the pacing drags. Too many scenes circle the same ideas without deepening them. Instead of feeling dropped into Esther’s life, I kept feeling like I was watching it from a distance.

That distance was the real problem. I understood what the characters represented. I just didn’t care about most of them. Esther’s life contains tragedy, loyalty, sacrifice, and danger — and I was still bored. That’s not something I enjoy admitting about a John Irving novel.

My expectations were high, which may be partly on me. Readers coming to this without a history with Irving might land somewhere completely different.

The Part That Stings

Queen Esther is reaching for something honest. It asks serious questions about belonging, religious identity, parenthood, and what gets passed down through generations. I could see the shape of the novel I wanted. I kept waiting for a character or a moment to finally pull me in. But it never really happened.

The ideas are there. But the emotional drive that usually makes Irving’s stories feel exciting and rich in character isn’t.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for an advanced reader’s copy; all opinions expressed are my own.