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If certain writers experience an golden period, during which they hit the summit time after time, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s ran through a run of four substantial, gratifying works, from his late-seventies hit His Garp Novel to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. These were expansive, witty, warm books, tying characters he calls “misfits” to societal topics from women's rights to termination.

Since Owen Meany, it’s been waning returns, save in page length. His most recent work, the 2022 release The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages of topics Irving had delved into more skillfully in earlier books (mutism, restricted growth, transgenderism), with a lengthy script in the center to fill it out – as if padding were needed.

Therefore we come to a recent Irving with caution but still a tiny glimmer of optimism, which shines brighter when we find out that Queen Esther – a only four hundred thirty-two pages long – “returns to the setting of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties work is one of Irving’s top-tier works, set primarily in an children's home in St Cloud’s, Maine, managed by Dr Larch and his protege Homer.

The book is a failure from a novelist who once gave such delight

In His Cider House Novel, Irving discussed abortion and belonging with vibrancy, wit and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a significant book because it abandoned the topics that were evolving into tiresome tics in his books: the sport of wrestling, wild bears, Austrian capital, prostitution.

This book starts in the fictional town of New Hampshire's Penacook in the twentieth century's dawn, where Thomas and Constance Winslow adopt teenage ward the protagonist from St Cloud’s. We are a few decades before the events of His Earlier Novel, yet Dr Larch is still familiar: even then addicted to anesthetic, adored by his nurses, opening every speech with “At St Cloud's...” But his role in Queen Esther is confined to these opening parts.

The family fret about bringing up Esther properly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “in what way could they help a adolescent girl of Jewish descent discover her identity?” To address that, we jump ahead to Esther’s adulthood in the Roaring Twenties. She will be a member of the Jewish emigration to the region, where she will join the Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary organisation whose “purpose was to safeguard Jewish communities from hostile actions” and which would later establish the basis of the IDF.

These are enormous subjects to address, but having brought in them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is not really about the orphanage and Wilbur Larch, it’s still more disappointing that it’s likewise not really concerning Esther. For reasons that must relate to narrative construction, Esther becomes a surrogate mother for another of the couple's daughters, and gives birth to a baby boy, Jimmy, in World War II era – and the lion's share of this novel is Jimmy’s story.

And at this point is where Irving’s obsessions reappear loudly, both typical and distinct. Jimmy relocates to – of course – the Austrian capital; there’s discussion of dodging the draft notice through self-harm (His Earlier Book); a pet with a symbolic title (the dog's name, remember the earlier dog from His Hotel Novel); as well as the sport, prostitutes, authors and penises (Irving’s passim).

He is a less interesting persona than the heroine hinted to be, and the supporting players, such as pupils Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s tutor the tutor, are underdeveloped also. There are a few nice set pieces – Jimmy losing his virginity; a confrontation where a handful of bullies get battered with a support and a tire pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has not once been a delicate novelist, but that is is not the issue. He has always reiterated his points, telegraphed story twists and enabled them to gather in the viewer's imagination before bringing them to fruition in extended, surprising, amusing scenes. For instance, in Irving’s books, physical elements tend to go missing: think of the speech organ in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces reverberate through the story. In the book, a key character suffers the loss of an arm – but we only find out thirty pages before the finish.

She comes back late in the novel, but just with a last-minute feeling of ending the story. We not once do find out the complete story of her time in Palestine and Israel. The book is a letdown from a writer who once gave such pleasure. That’s the downside. The positive note is that Cider House – upon rereading in parallel to this book – yet stands up excellently, 40 years on. So read that in its place: it’s much longer as the new novel, but a dozen times as good.