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If a few authors enjoy an golden period, during which they reach the heights consistently, then U.S. writer John Irving’s lasted through a run of four long, gratifying works, from his 1978 hit Garp to the 1989 release Owen Meany. Such were rich, funny, warm works, linking figures he describes as “outliers” to social issues from gender equality to abortion.

After His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been waning results, except in word count. His previous book, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages long of subjects Irving had explored more effectively in prior novels (inability to speak, restricted growth, trans issues), with a lengthy film script in the center to pad it out – as if padding were required.

Therefore we come to a new Irving with caution but still a tiny glimmer of expectation, which shines stronger when we discover that His Queen Esther Novel – a mere four hundred thirty-two pages – “returns to the setting of The Cider House Novel”. That 1985 work is among Irving’s top-tier novels, located primarily in an institution in St Cloud’s, Maine, managed by Dr Larch and his protege Homer.

This novel is a disappointment from a novelist who once gave such pleasure

In Cider House, Irving wrote about termination and acceptance with richness, humor and an comprehensive compassion. And it was a important novel because it abandoned the themes that were turning into repetitive patterns in his works: grappling, ursine creatures, Vienna, sex work.

The novel starts in the fictional community of Penacook, New Hampshire in the early 20th century, where the Winslow couple adopt teenage orphan the title character from the orphanage. We are a few years prior to the events of His Earlier Novel, yet the doctor stays identifiable: already using ether, beloved by his nurses, opening every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his appearance in Queen Esther is limited to these opening scenes.

The Winslows fret about raising Esther properly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how could they help a teenage Jewish girl understand her place?” To tackle that, we move forward to Esther’s adulthood in the Roaring Twenties. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to the area, where she will enter Haganah, the Jewish nationalist paramilitary force whose “mission was to safeguard Jewish settlements from Arab attacks” and which would subsequently become the core of the IDF.

Those are huge themes to tackle, but having presented them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s frustrating that this book is hardly about the orphanage and Dr Larch, it’s all the more disappointing that it’s also not really concerning the main character. For motivations that must involve narrative construction, Esther turns into a surrogate mother for a different of the couple's offspring, and bears to a male child, Jimmy, in the early forties – and the majority of this novel is his story.

And at this point is where Irving’s fixations reappear loudly, both regular and particular. Jimmy moves to – where else? – the city; there’s mention of evading the military conscription through bodily injury (Owen Meany); a canine with a symbolic designation (the animal, recall the earlier dog from His Hotel Novel); as well as wrestling, streetwalkers, authors and male anatomy (Irving’s passim).

Jimmy is a duller character than Esther suggested to be, and the minor figures, such as pupils the pair, and Jimmy’s teacher the tutor, are one-dimensional too. There are several nice episodes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a confrontation where a couple of thugs get assaulted with a walking aid and a air pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has never been a delicate writer, but that is not the issue. He has consistently reiterated his ideas, foreshadowed narrative turns and enabled them to gather in the audience's mind before taking them to resolution in lengthy, shocking, amusing sequences. For case, in Irving’s works, physical elements tend to go missing: recall the speech organ in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those absences reverberate through the plot. In the book, a central person suffers the loss of an arm – but we just discover thirty pages later the finish.

The protagonist comes back late in the book, but just with a final feeling of concluding. We not once discover the complete story of her life in the Middle East. Queen Esther is a letdown from a novelist who previously gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The positive note is that The Cider House Rules – upon rereading in parallel to this novel – even now holds up beautifully, four decades later. So read it instead: it’s much longer as Queen Esther, but far as enjoyable.