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If a few authors enjoy an peak period, where they hit the summit time after time, then American author John Irving’s extended through a run of several fat, satisfying works, from his 1978 hit His Garp Novel to 1989’s His Owen Meany Book. Such were rich, funny, warm books, tying protagonists he calls “outsiders” to cultural themes from gender equality to abortion.

Following A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been declining returns, except in size. His previous novel, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was 900 pages in length of subjects Irving had delved into more effectively in prior books (inability to speak, short stature, gender identity), with a two-hundred-page screenplay in the center to pad it out – as if padding were necessary.

Thus we come to a latest Irving with caution but still a faint glimmer of expectation, which glows brighter when we find out that Queen Esther – a mere four hundred thirty-two pages long – “revisits the setting of The Cider House Novel”. That 1985 novel is part of Irving’s very best novels, located largely in an orphanage in the town of St Cloud’s, operated by Wilbur Larch and his assistant Homer Wells.

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

In His Cider House Novel, Irving discussed pregnancy termination and acceptance with vibrancy, comedy and an comprehensive compassion. And it was a important book because it abandoned the themes that were turning into tiresome patterns in his books: the sport of wrestling, wild bears, Vienna, sex work.

The novel begins in the imaginary community of the Penacook area in the beginning of the 1900s, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow welcome teenage ward Esther from St Cloud’s. We are a several generations ahead of the storyline of Cider House, yet the doctor remains familiar: already dependent on ether, beloved by his nurses, starting every speech with “In this place...” But his appearance in the book is confined to these early sections.

The family are concerned about bringing up Esther well: she’s Jewish, and “in what way could they help a teenage Jewish girl discover her identity?” To answer that, we move forward to Esther’s later life in the 1920s. She will be a member of the Jewish emigration to the area, where she will become part of the Haganah, the Zionist militant organisation whose “purpose was to safeguard Jewish settlements from hostile actions” and which would eventually become the foundation of the Israeli Defense Forces.

These are huge topics to tackle, but having brought in them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is not really about St Cloud’s and the doctor, it’s even more upsetting that it’s also not really concerning the titular figure. For causes that must connect to narrative construction, Esther ends up as a surrogate mother for one more of the Winslows’ daughters, and bears to a baby boy, the boy, in 1941 – and the majority of this book is his tale.

And here is where Irving’s fixations return strongly, both common and distinct. Jimmy goes to – naturally – the city; there’s discussion of evading the military conscription through self-mutilation (Owen Meany); a pet with a significant designation (the animal, recall the canine from His Hotel Novel); as well as wrestling, sex workers, writers and male anatomy (Irving’s recurring).

The character is a more mundane character than the female lead suggested to be, and the secondary characters, such as pupils the two students, and Jimmy’s tutor the tutor, are underdeveloped as well. There are a few nice scenes – Jimmy deflowering; a fight where a couple of bullies get assaulted with a support and a tire pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has not once been a nuanced author, but that is not the difficulty. He has consistently restated his points, hinted at story twists and let them to build up in the audience's thoughts before taking them to fruition in long, jarring, entertaining sequences. For case, in Irving’s books, body parts tend to go missing: think of the tongue in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those losses echo through the narrative. In this novel, a central person suffers the loss of an arm – but we just discover 30 pages later the conclusion.

She reappears toward the end in the story, but merely with a eleventh-hour impression of ending the story. We never discover the full narrative of her experiences in the region. This novel is a disappointment from a author who once gave such delight. That’s the downside. The positive note is that The Cider House Rules – I reread it in parallel to this work – still stands up wonderfully, four decades later. So pick up the earlier work instead: it’s much longer as the new novel, but 12 times as great.