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If some writers experience an golden phase, where they achieve the pinnacle repeatedly, then U.S. writer John Irving’s extended through a series of four long, gratifying books, from his 1978 hit The World According to Garp to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. Such were generous, witty, big-hearted novels, tying characters he refers to as “outliers” to cultural themes from feminism to reproductive rights.

Following A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing results, save in page length. His last work, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages in length of subjects Irving had examined better in previous books (inability to speak, short stature, trans issues), with a 200-page film script in the heart to pad it out – as if filler were necessary.

Therefore we approach a new Irving with reservation but still a tiny spark of expectation, which glows brighter when we discover that His Queen Esther Novel – a mere four hundred thirty-two pages – “revisits the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That 1985 work is one of Irving’s very best works, taking place mostly in an institution in St Cloud’s, Maine, managed by Wilbur Larch and his protege Wells.

The book is a letdown from a novelist who previously gave such joy

In Cider House, Irving discussed pregnancy termination and identity with richness, humor and an total understanding. And it was a significant novel because it moved past the topics that were becoming annoying tics in his novels: grappling, bears, Vienna, the oldest profession.

This book opens in the fictional community of the Penacook area in the twentieth century's dawn, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow adopt young orphan Esther from St Cloud’s. We are a few decades ahead of the events of The Cider House Rules, yet the doctor stays recognisable: still addicted to ether, beloved by his caregivers, starting every speech with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his appearance in Queen Esther is limited to these initial parts.

The family worry about parenting Esther correctly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how could they help a teenage Jewish female find herself?” To tackle that, we flash forward to Esther’s grown-up years in the Roaring Twenties. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to the area, where she will enter the Haganah, the Jewish nationalist paramilitary group whose “mission was to safeguard Jewish settlements from hostile actions” and which would eventually form the basis of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Those are huge subjects to take on, but having brought in them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s frustrating that the novel is hardly about St Cloud's and Wilbur Larch, it’s still more disappointing that it’s additionally not focused on the main character. For causes that must involve story mechanics, Esther becomes a substitute parent for one more of the Winslows’ children, and gives birth to a son, Jimmy, in World War II era – and the lion's share of this story is the boy's story.

And at this point is where Irving’s preoccupations return strongly, both regular and distinct. Jimmy moves to – where else? – the city; there’s discussion of dodging the draft notice through bodily injury (His Earlier Book); a pet with a meaningful title (the dog's name, remember the canine from His Hotel Novel); as well as grappling, sex workers, writers and genitalia (Irving’s passim).

He is a less interesting persona than Esther hinted to be, and the minor characters, such as pupils Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s instructor the tutor, are one-dimensional also. There are some nice set pieces – Jimmy losing his virginity; a confrontation where a handful of bullies get beaten with a crutch and a bicycle pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has never been a delicate author, but that is not the issue. He has repeatedly repeated his points, hinted at narrative turns and enabled them to build up in the reader’s thoughts before taking them to fruition in extended, jarring, funny sequences. For example, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to be lost: think of the tongue in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those absences resonate through the story. In Queen Esther, a central person loses an upper extremity – but we only discover 30 pages later the conclusion.

She comes back in the final part in the story, but just with a eleventh-hour sense of wrapping things up. We never discover the complete story of her time in Palestine and Israel. Queen Esther is a failure from a writer who in the past gave such pleasure. That’s the downside. The positive note is that The Cider House Rules – upon rereading together with this work – even now remains excellently, four decades later. So pick up the earlier work as an alternative: it’s much longer as Queen Esther, but 12 times as great.