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If certain novelists experience an peak era, during which they reach the heights time after time, then American writer John Irving’s ran through a run of four substantial, rewarding novels, from his late-seventies hit Garp to 1989’s His Owen Meany Book. Those were rich, funny, compassionate books, tying protagonists he describes as “outsiders” to societal topics from gender equality to abortion.

Following A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been declining outcomes, except in size. His previous book, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages long of topics Irving had delved into better in prior novels (inability to speak, dwarfism, gender identity), with a 200-page film script in the center to pad it out – as if extra material were required.

Therefore we approach a latest Irving with caution but still a small flame of optimism, which glows hotter when we discover that Queen Esther – a just 432 pages – “goes back to the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties book is one of Irving’s top-tier works, located largely in an institution in St Cloud’s, Maine, operated by Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Homer Wells.

Queen Esther is a letdown from a novelist who once gave such joy

In Cider House, Irving explored termination and identity with richness, comedy and an comprehensive understanding. And it was a significant work because it abandoned the themes that were turning into repetitive habits in his novels: grappling, bears, Austrian capital, the oldest profession.

This book opens in the fictional village of the Penacook area in the beginning of the 1900s, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow adopt 14-year-old orphan the title character from St Cloud’s. We are a a number of generations prior to the action of The Cider House Rules, yet the doctor stays familiar: even then addicted to ether, adored by his nurses, beginning every speech with “In this place...” But his role in the book is limited to these opening scenes.

The Winslows are concerned about raising Esther properly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how could they help a young girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To tackle that, we flash forward to Esther’s adulthood in the twenties era. She will be part of the Jewish exodus to the region, where she will join the Haganah, the Jewish nationalist militant organisation whose “mission was to defend Jewish towns from Arab attacks” and which would later become the core of the Israel's military.

Those are huge subjects to take on, but having introduced them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is not actually about St Cloud’s and Wilbur Larch, it’s even more disappointing that it’s also not really concerning Esther. For reasons that must connect to story mechanics, Esther becomes a gestational carrier for another of the family's offspring, and gives birth to a son, Jimmy, in 1941 – and the bulk of this story is the boy's story.

And now is where Irving’s fixations come roaring back, both common and particular. Jimmy moves to – naturally – Vienna; there’s talk of dodging the draft notice through self-mutilation (His Earlier Book); a dog with a significant title (the animal, meet the earlier dog from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, sex workers, novelists and genitalia (Irving’s recurring).

Jimmy is a less interesting character than the female lead promised to be, and the secondary characters, such as young people Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s tutor the tutor, are one-dimensional too. There are some nice scenes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a fight where a few ruffians get battered with a crutch and a air pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has never been a nuanced writer, but that is isn't the problem. He has always reiterated his ideas, telegraphed narrative turns and enabled them to accumulate in the audience's thoughts before leading them to completion in lengthy, shocking, amusing moments. For instance, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to be lost: recall the oral part in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those losses reverberate through the plot. In this novel, a key character is deprived of an upper extremity – but we only learn 30 pages before the conclusion.

Esther comes back in the final part in the book, but merely with a eleventh-hour feeling of ending the story. We do not learn the entire story of her experiences in Palestine and Israel. Queen Esther is a failure from a author who previously gave such joy. That’s the downside. The upside is that His Classic Novel – I reread it in parallel to this work – even now holds up wonderfully, 40 years on. So read that in its place: it’s double the length as this book, but far as enjoyable.