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If a few authors have an golden era, during which they hit the summit consistently, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s extended through a sequence of four long, gratifying books, from his 1978 breakthrough His Garp Novel to 1989’s Owen Meany. Such were expansive, funny, warm novels, linking characters he calls “misfits” to cultural themes from feminism to reproductive rights.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing returns, except in size. His most recent book, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was 900 pages in length of topics Irving had delved into better in earlier works (selective mutism, dwarfism, gender identity), with a lengthy screenplay in the heart to fill it out – as if extra material were needed.

Thus we approach a latest Irving with reservation but still a faint flame of hope, which glows hotter when we learn that His Queen Esther Novel – a just four hundred thirty-two pages in length – “goes back to the universe of The Cider House Novel”. That 1985 book is one of Irving’s top-tier novels, taking place primarily in an children's home in the town of St Cloud’s, operated by Dr Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Homer.

Queen Esther is a disappointment from a novelist who in the past gave such pleasure

In Cider House, Irving wrote about termination and identity with richness, wit and an total understanding. And it was a significant novel because it left behind the topics that were becoming tiresome habits in his works: wrestling, wild bears, Austrian capital, the oldest profession.

This book begins in the imaginary village of the Penacook area in the twentieth century's dawn, where Thomas and Constance Winslow welcome young ward Esther from St Cloud’s. We are a a number of generations prior to the action of The Cider House Rules, yet Dr Larch stays identifiable: still addicted to anesthetic, adored by his nurses, opening every talk with “In this place...” But his presence in this novel is confined to these early sections.

The Winslows worry about parenting Esther well: she’s Jewish, and “how might they help a young girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To address that, we jump ahead to Esther’s later life in the Roaring Twenties. She will be a member of the Jewish emigration to Palestine, where she will join the paramilitary group, the Jewish nationalist armed organisation whose “mission was to protect Jewish towns from hostile actions” and which would later establish the core of the IDF.

Such are massive themes to tackle, but having presented them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s regrettable that the novel is not actually about St Cloud's and Wilbur Larch, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s also not about the main character. For causes that must involve narrative construction, Esther ends up as a surrogate mother for another of the family's daughters, and bears to a male child, Jimmy, in the early forties – and the majority of this book is the boy's tale.

And here is where Irving’s obsessions come roaring back, both typical and distinct. Jimmy goes to – naturally – the city; there’s mention of evading the draft notice through self-mutilation (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a canine with a meaningful designation (Hard Rain, remember the earlier dog from His Hotel Novel); as well as wrestling, prostitutes, writers and male anatomy (Irving’s throughout).

Jimmy is a duller character than the female lead hinted to be, and the minor figures, such as pupils Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s instructor the tutor, are one-dimensional also. There are some amusing set pieces – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a confrontation where a couple of bullies get assaulted with a walking aid and a air pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not ever been a nuanced novelist, but that is isn't the issue. He has repeatedly reiterated his ideas, foreshadowed narrative turns and let them to accumulate in the audience's imagination before bringing them to completion in extended, shocking, amusing scenes. For instance, in Irving’s works, physical elements tend to disappear: recall the tongue in Garp, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those losses echo through the plot. In Queen Esther, a key person is deprived of an limb – but we only find out thirty pages later the conclusion.

The protagonist returns late in the novel, but merely with a final impression of wrapping things up. We not once do find out the full story of her life in the region. The book is a letdown from a author who in the past gave such joy. That’s the downside. The good news is that The Cider House Rules – revisiting it together with this book – still holds up wonderfully, 40 years on. So read it in its place: it’s double the length as Queen Esther, but far as good.