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If a few writers experience an peak period, during which they reach the pinnacle consistently, then U.S. writer John Irving’s ran through a sequence of several long, rewarding books, from his 1978 breakthrough His Garp Novel to 1989’s His Owen Meany Book. Such were expansive, funny, compassionate novels, linking protagonists he calls “misfits” to social issues from gender equality to abortion.

Since A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been declining returns, save in page length. His previous book, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was 900 pages in length of topics Irving had explored more effectively in earlier works (inability to speak, short stature, transgenderism), with a lengthy script in the middle to pad it out – as if filler were required.

So we look at a latest Irving with care but still a small glimmer of hope, which shines hotter when we find out that Queen Esther – a only four hundred thirty-two pages in length – “revisits the universe of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties book is among Irving’s very best books, located primarily in an children's home in St Cloud’s, Maine, run by Dr Wilbur Larch and his assistant Homer Wells.

Queen Esther is a disappointment from a author who previously gave such pleasure

In Cider House, Irving explored termination and belonging with richness, wit and an all-encompassing understanding. And it was a significant book because it moved past the topics that were becoming repetitive tics in his works: wrestling, ursine creatures, the city of Vienna, sex work.

This book opens in the made-up town of the Penacook area in the twentieth century's dawn, where the Winslow couple welcome 14-year-old orphan the title character from the orphanage. We are a a number of decades before the action of His Earlier Novel, yet the doctor is still identifiable: even then addicted to the drug, adored by his staff, beginning every speech with “At St Cloud's...” But his appearance in this novel is confined to these opening parts.

The family worry about bringing up Esther properly: she’s Jewish, and “in what way could they help a teenage Jewish girl discover her identity?” To tackle that, we jump ahead to Esther’s adulthood in the Roaring Twenties. She will be a member of the Jewish migration to the area, where she will enter the paramilitary group, the pro-Zionist militant force whose “goal was to defend Jewish settlements from hostile actions” and which would subsequently become the foundation of the IDF.

Those are enormous topics to take on, but having presented them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s disappointing that the novel is not really about St Cloud’s and the doctor, it’s still more disappointing that it’s additionally not focused on Esther. For motivations that must involve narrative construction, Esther ends up as a substitute parent for a different of the couple's offspring, and bears to a baby boy, the boy, in 1941 – and the bulk of this story is his tale.

And at this point is where Irving’s preoccupations reappear loudly, both typical and particular. Jimmy relocates to – naturally – the Austrian capital; there’s talk of avoiding the military conscription through self-mutilation (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a dog with a meaningful title (the animal, recall Sorrow from His Hotel Novel); as well as the sport, streetwalkers, writers and male anatomy (Irving’s passim).

Jimmy is a less interesting character than Esther promised to be, and the minor characters, such as pupils the pair, and Jimmy’s tutor Eissler, are one-dimensional also. There are several enjoyable set pieces – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a fight where a few bullies get assaulted with a support and a tire pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not ever been a subtle novelist, but that is is not the problem. He has always restated his points, telegraphed plot developments and enabled them to build up in the viewer's imagination before taking them to completion in long, jarring, funny moments. For case, in Irving’s books, body parts tend to be lost: remember the tongue in Garp, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces resonate through the plot. In the book, a major figure suffers the loss of an upper extremity – but we just find out 30 pages later the conclusion.

The protagonist comes back late in the story, but only with a eleventh-hour sense of wrapping things up. We do not learn the full account of her life in Palestine and Israel. This novel is a disappointment from a novelist who once gave such joy. That’s the bad news. The positive note is that His Classic Novel – I reread it alongside this work – still holds up excellently, four decades later. So read it instead: it’s double the length as the new novel, but a dozen times as enjoyable.