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If certain novelists enjoy an peak phase, during which they reach the heights repeatedly, then American writer John Irving’s ran through a run of four fat, satisfying books, from his late-seventies hit The World According to Garp to 1989’s His Owen Meany Book. Such were generous, funny, warm books, linking figures he refers to as “outliers” to societal topics from gender equality to abortion.

Since Owen Meany, it’s been declining returns, aside from in word count. His most recent book, the 2022 release The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages in length of themes Irving had explored more effectively in prior works (selective mutism, short stature, transgenderism), with a two-hundred-page screenplay in the center to extend it – as if extra material were required.

Therefore we approach a latest Irving with reservation but still a small spark of hope, which burns stronger when we find out that Queen Esther – a only four hundred thirty-two pages – “returns to the setting of The Cider House Rules”. That 1985 novel is part of Irving’s top-tier novels, located largely in an children's home in St Cloud’s, Maine, operated by Wilbur Larch and his protege Homer.

This novel is a failure from a author who once gave such pleasure

In Cider House, Irving explored abortion and belonging with richness, comedy and an total compassion. And it was a significant work because it moved past the topics that were turning into annoying tics in his books: grappling, wild bears, Vienna, the oldest profession.

The novel opens in the fictional town of Penacook, New Hampshire in the twentieth century's dawn, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow take in young ward the protagonist from the orphanage. We are a few decades prior to the action of The Cider House Rules, yet the doctor stays identifiable: still dependent on ether, adored by his staff, beginning every speech with “At St Cloud's...” But his presence in this novel is restricted to these initial sections.

The couple worry about parenting Esther correctly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how might they help a teenage Jewish female discover her identity?” To answer that, we jump ahead to Esther’s grown-up years in the 1920s. She will be part of the Jewish emigration to the region, where she will join Haganah, the pro-Zionist armed force whose “mission was to safeguard Jewish towns from hostile actions” and which would subsequently become the core of the IDF.

Such are huge subjects to tackle, but having introduced them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s disappointing that Queen Esther is not really about the orphanage and Dr Larch, it’s even more upsetting that it’s also not about the main character. For reasons that must involve plot engineering, Esther becomes a surrogate mother for one more of the couple's daughters, and delivers to a son, James, in World War II era – and the bulk of this novel is Jimmy’s narrative.

And now is where Irving’s preoccupations return strongly, both common and particular. Jimmy relocates to – naturally – Vienna; there’s discussion of avoiding the military conscription through self-mutilation (His Earlier Book); a canine with a significant name (the animal, meet the earlier dog from His Hotel Novel); as well as grappling, streetwalkers, writers and penises (Irving’s throughout).

Jimmy is a duller figure than Esther promised to be, and the supporting figures, such as pupils the two students, and Jimmy’s instructor Eissler, are one-dimensional also. There are several enjoyable episodes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a confrontation where a couple of bullies get battered with a crutch and a bicycle pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has never been a subtle novelist, but that is not the difficulty. He has consistently repeated his points, telegraphed narrative turns and enabled them to accumulate in the audience's imagination before leading them to fruition in extended, jarring, amusing sequences. For case, in Irving’s books, anatomical features tend to go missing: think of the oral part in The Garp Novel, the digit in Owen Meany. Those losses echo through the plot. In the book, a key person suffers the loss of an limb – but we only find out 30 pages later the finish.

She reappears in the final part in the story, but merely with a eleventh-hour impression of concluding. We not once discover the complete account of her life in Palestine and Israel. Queen Esther is a letdown from a writer who once gave such pleasure. That’s the negative aspect. The good news is that Cider House – I reread it together with this book – even now remains wonderfully, four decades later. So choose the earlier work as an alternative: it’s double the length as the new novel, but 12 times as enjoyable.