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If some authors have an peak era, where they hit the summit repeatedly, then U.S. author John Irving’s ran through a run of four substantial, rewarding books, from his late-seventies hit Garp to 1989’s His Owen Meany Book. Such were generous, funny, compassionate novels, connecting characters he describes as “misfits” to social issues from gender equality to abortion.

Following Owen Meany, it’s been declining results, aside from in word count. His most recent work, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages of subjects Irving had examined more skillfully in earlier works (selective mutism, restricted growth, trans issues), with a 200-page script in the heart to extend it – as if extra material were necessary.

Therefore we approach a new Irving with care but still a tiny flame of optimism, which shines hotter when we discover that His Queen Esther Novel – a only 432 pages – “returns to the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties book is among Irving’s finest novels, set largely in an institution in the town of St Cloud’s, run by Wilbur Larch and his protege Wells.

This novel is a letdown from a writer who once gave such joy

In The Cider House Rules, Irving wrote about pregnancy termination and acceptance with vibrancy, comedy and an comprehensive compassion. And it was a important novel because it moved past the themes that were turning into repetitive patterns in his novels: the sport of wrestling, wild bears, Austrian capital, sex work.

This book opens in the fictional community of New Hampshire's Penacook in the beginning of the 1900s, where Thomas and Constance Winslow welcome teenage orphan the protagonist from St Cloud’s. We are a several years before the storyline of His Earlier Novel, yet the doctor is still familiar: even then dependent on ether, adored by his staff, opening every speech with “At St Cloud's...” But his appearance in the book is limited to these early parts.

The couple worry about raising Esther properly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how could they help a adolescent girl of Jewish descent discover her identity?” To address that, we move forward to Esther’s adulthood in the twenties era. She will be a member of the Jewish exodus to Palestine, where she will join the paramilitary group, the Jewish nationalist paramilitary organisation whose “goal was to safeguard Jewish communities from hostile actions” and which would subsequently establish the basis of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Those are enormous themes to address, but having presented them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s frustrating that this book is not really about the orphanage and Dr Larch, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s also not about Esther. For reasons that must connect to plot engineering, Esther becomes a substitute parent for one more of the family's children, and gives birth to a baby boy, the boy, in World War II era – and the majority of this novel is Jimmy’s tale.

And at this point is where Irving’s fixations come roaring back, both regular and particular. Jimmy moves to – where else? – Vienna; there’s discussion of dodging the draft notice through self-harm (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a canine with a meaningful name (Hard Rain, recall the canine from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, streetwalkers, writers and penises (Irving’s throughout).

He is a more mundane character than Esther hinted to be, and the secondary figures, such as young people the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher Annelies Eissler, are flat as well. There are a few amusing set pieces – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a confrontation where a handful of bullies get beaten with a support and a bicycle pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not once been a subtle novelist, but that is is not the problem. He has always repeated his points, telegraphed plot developments and let them to accumulate in the reader’s imagination before bringing them to completion in extended, surprising, funny moments. For instance, in Irving’s works, anatomical features tend to go missing: remember the speech organ in The Garp Novel, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those absences reverberate through the story. In this novel, a key character loses an upper extremity – but we just find out 30 pages the finish.

She returns toward the end in the book, but just with a eleventh-hour impression of concluding. We do not learn the full narrative of her life in the Middle East. This novel is a failure from a author who in the past gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The upside is that Cider House – upon rereading in parallel to this book – even now holds up excellently, four decades later. So pick up it instead: it’s twice as long as Queen Esther, but a dozen times as good.