Queen Esther
A Novel
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- € 16,99
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After forty years, John Irving returns to the world of his bestselling classic novel and Academy Award–winning film, The Cider House Rules, revisiting the orphanage in St. Cloud’s, Maine, where Dr. Wilbur Larch takes in Esther—a Viennese-born Jew whose life is shaped by anti-Semitism.
Esther Nacht is born in Vienna in 1905. Her father dies on board the ship to Portland, Maine; her mother is murdered by anti-Semites in Portland. Dr. Larch knows it won’t be easy to find a Jewish family to adopt Esther; in fact, he won’t find any family who’ll adopt her.
When Esther is fourteen, soon to be a ward of the state, Dr. Larch meets the Winslows, a philanthropic New England family with a history of providing foster care for unadopted orphans. The Winslows aren’t Jewish, but they despise anti-Semitism. Esther’s gratitude for the Winslows is unending; even as she retraces her roots back to Vienna, she never stops loving and protecting the Winslows. In the final chapter, set in Jerusalem in 1981, Esther Nacht is seventy-six.
John Irving’s sixteenth novel is a testament to his enduring ability to weave complex characters and intricate narratives that challenge and captivate. Queen Esther is not just a story of survival but a profound exploration of identity, belonging, and the enduring impact of history on our personal lives showcasing why Irving remains one of the world’s most beloved, provocative, and entertaining authors—a storyteller of our time and for all time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Irving revisits the setting of The Cider House Rules with a baggy novel about a Viennese Jewish orphan and her adoptive family in New Hampshire. Esther Nacht is born in Vienna in 1905 and loses her father to pneumonia during the family's passage across the Atlantic when she is two. She and her mother, Hanna, settle in Portland, Maine, where Hanna is killed by an antisemite when Esther is three. Esther then winds up in the orphanage run by Dr. Wilbur Larch, a character from Cider House, before she's adopted as a teen by the tolerant and patrician Thomas Winslow and his wife. In the late 1930s, Esther travels to Jerusalem and aids a Zionist paramilitary group. After Israel's independence in 1948, she becomes involved with the Israeli Defense Forces and engages in heroic exploits well into her 70s. Long stretches of the novel are devoted to her biological son, Jimmy, who is raised by Thomas's daughter, and grows up to become a novelist. It's tough to find a clear through line, and Irving sidetracks the proceedings for extended digressions into the history of circumcision and other matters. There's fun to be had in his bawdy wordplay, however, as when Jimmy, visiting Thomas in the hospital after a stroke, misunderstands a nurse's use of the word "labile" and "imagine his unfortunate grandfather as emotionally vaginal." Unfortunately, such moments are too few and far between to save this jumbled tale.
