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If a few authors enjoy an peak era, where they hit the pinnacle consistently, then American writer John Irving’s lasted through a run of four long, rewarding works, from his late-seventies success Garp to 1989’s Owen Meany. Such were generous, funny, warm works, tying characters he calls “outliers” to cultural themes from gender equality to reproductive rights.

Following Owen Meany, it’s been declining returns, aside from in page length. His most recent book, the 2022 release The Last Chairlift, was nine hundred pages of topics Irving had examined more skillfully in earlier books (inability to speak, short stature, gender identity), with a lengthy screenplay in the middle to fill it out – as if padding were required.

Thus we approach a latest Irving with caution but still a faint spark of hope, which shines hotter when we learn that Queen Esther – a only 432 pages in length – “returns to the setting of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 book is one of Irving’s very best novels, located mostly in an orphanage in Maine's St Cloud’s, operated by Dr Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Homer Wells.

This novel is a disappointment from a novelist who once gave such joy

In His Cider House Novel, Irving wrote about termination and belonging with richness, humor and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a significant novel because it abandoned the themes that were becoming annoying patterns in his books: the sport of wrestling, bears, the city of Vienna, prostitution.

Queen Esther starts in the imaginary community of the Penacook area in the early 20th century, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow take in 14-year-old ward the protagonist from St Cloud's home. We are a a number of years before the events of The Cider House Rules, yet the doctor is still familiar: still using anesthetic, beloved by his caregivers, opening every address with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his appearance in Queen Esther is limited to these initial sections.

The couple fret about bringing up Esther properly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how might they help a young Jewish female discover her identity?” To answer that, we move forward to Esther’s grown-up years in the 1920s. She will be involved of the Jewish migration to Palestine, where she will join Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary group whose “purpose was to defend Jewish towns from Arab attacks” and which would eventually form the core of the IDF.

Those are massive themes to tackle, but having introduced them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is not really about St Cloud’s and Dr Larch, it’s still more upsetting that it’s also not really concerning the main character. For reasons that must relate to plot engineering, Esther ends up as a gestational carrier for one more of the Winslows’ daughters, and bears to a male child, the boy, in 1941 – and the bulk of this book is his narrative.

And at this point is where Irving’s fixations come roaring back, both typical and particular. Jimmy goes to – naturally – Vienna; there’s talk of dodging the military conscription through self-mutilation (His Earlier Book); a canine with a significant title (the dog's name, remember Sorrow from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, sex workers, writers and penises (Irving’s throughout).

He is a less interesting persona than the female lead hinted to be, and the secondary players, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s tutor Annelies Eissler, are underdeveloped too. There are a few enjoyable scenes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a fight where a handful of ruffians get battered with a crutch and a tire pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has never been a subtle author, but that is is not the difficulty. He has always restated his ideas, telegraphed plot developments and let them to gather in the reader’s thoughts before leading them to fruition in extended, jarring, entertaining sequences. For example, in Irving’s books, physical elements tend to go missing: think of the oral part in The Garp Novel, the digit in Owen Meany. Those losses echo through the narrative. In Queen Esther, a key character loses an limb – but we just learn thirty pages later the finish.

Esther reappears in the final part in the book, but just with a eleventh-hour impression of ending the story. We not once discover the full story of her time in Palestine and Israel. Queen Esther is a failure from a novelist who in the past gave such delight. That’s the negative aspect. The positive note is that Cider House – I reread it alongside this work – even now remains excellently, four decades later. So choose the earlier work as an alternative: it’s double the length as Queen Esther, but a dozen times as great.