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If a few novelists enjoy an golden period, where they reach the summit consistently, then American novelist John Irving’s lasted through a run of four fat, satisfying books, from his 1978 hit His Garp Novel to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. These were rich, funny, warm novels, connecting figures he refers to as “misfits” to social issues from women's rights to reproductive rights.

Since A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been declining returns, except in size. His last book, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages of subjects Irving had delved into more skillfully in prior novels (mutism, restricted growth, transgenderism), with a 200-page screenplay in the heart to fill it out – as if extra material were needed.

Therefore we come to a recent Irving with care but still a tiny glimmer of expectation, which shines stronger when we find out that Queen Esther – a only 432 pages long – “goes back to the setting of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties book is part of Irving’s top-tier works, set mostly in an institution in St Cloud’s, Maine, operated by Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Wells.

This novel is a failure from a writer who previously gave such pleasure

In His Cider House Novel, Irving discussed termination and belonging with richness, humor and an total empathy. And it was a significant book because it abandoned the topics that were becoming tiresome tics in his books: grappling, bears, the city of Vienna, sex work.

The novel starts in the fictional community of the Penacook area in the beginning of the 1900s, where the Winslow couple take in teenage ward Esther from St Cloud's home. We are a several decades before the events of His Earlier Novel, yet the doctor remains recognisable: even then addicted to anesthetic, respected by his caregivers, opening every speech with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his appearance in this novel is limited to these initial scenes.

The family fret about parenting Esther well: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how could they help a teenage Jewish female find herself?” To tackle that, we move forward to Esther’s adulthood in the Roaring Twenties. She will be part of the Jewish exodus to the region, where she will become part of the Haganah, the Zionist armed force whose “goal was to protect Jewish towns from hostile actions” and which would later become the foundation of the Israel's military.

These are massive subjects to take on, but having presented them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is not actually about St Cloud's and the doctor, it’s even more disappointing that it’s also not focused on the main character. For causes that must involve narrative construction, Esther becomes a gestational carrier for another of the Winslows’ offspring, and delivers to a male child, Jimmy, in 1941 – and the bulk of this book is his narrative.

And here is where Irving’s preoccupations return strongly, both common and specific. Jimmy relocates to – where else? – the city; there’s mention of evading the draft notice through self-mutilation (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a dog with a meaningful name (Hard Rain, remember Sorrow from His Hotel Novel); as well as wrestling, prostitutes, writers and genitalia (Irving’s recurring).

He is a more mundane figure than the female lead suggested to be, and the minor players, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s instructor Annelies Eissler, are flat as well. There are some amusing episodes – Jimmy deflowering; a fight where a couple of ruffians get assaulted with a support and a tire pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not ever been a subtle novelist, but that is is not the problem. He has always repeated his points, hinted at story twists and enabled them to accumulate in the viewer's thoughts before bringing them to completion in long, surprising, amusing scenes. For example, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to disappear: remember the oral part in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces reverberate through the story. In the book, a key person suffers the loss of an limb – but we merely discover 30 pages later the finish.

She returns in the final part in the story, but only with a eleventh-hour sense of wrapping things up. We do not learn the entire account of her life in the Middle East. This novel is a failure from a novelist who in the past gave such delight. That’s the bad news. The good news is that Cider House – I reread it alongside this work – still holds up excellently, four decades later. So choose it instead: it’s much longer as Queen Esther, but far as enjoyable.