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If some novelists enjoy an peak era, where they hit the pinnacle time after time, then U.S. writer John Irving’s ran through a sequence of several substantial, satisfying novels, from his 1978 success Garp to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Those were expansive, funny, warm books, linking figures he describes as “outliers” to social issues from women's rights to reproductive rights.

After Owen Meany, it’s been waning outcomes, aside from in size. His previous work, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was 900 pages in length of themes Irving had explored more skillfully in prior novels (mutism, short stature, trans issues), with a lengthy film script in the middle to fill it out – as if filler were needed.

So we approach a new Irving with care but still a faint flame of hope, which burns stronger when we discover that Queen Esther – a mere 432 pages in length – “revisits the setting of His Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties work is one of Irving’s top-tier books, set primarily in an orphanage in St Cloud’s, Maine, run by Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Wells.

Queen Esther is a letdown from a novelist who previously gave such joy

In Cider House, Irving wrote about pregnancy termination and belonging with vibrancy, wit and an total empathy. And it was a major novel because it abandoned the topics that were turning into annoying patterns in his novels: wrestling, bears, Vienna, sex work.

This book starts in the imaginary town of the Penacook area in the beginning of the 1900s, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow adopt teenage orphan the title character from the orphanage. We are a few generations before the storyline of His Earlier Novel, yet Wilbur Larch is still identifiable: already addicted to ether, respected by his nurses, opening every speech with “At St Cloud's...” But his appearance in Queen Esther is restricted to these early scenes.

The Winslows fret about parenting Esther correctly: she’s Jewish, and “how might they help a teenage Jewish female understand her place?” To tackle that, we flash forward to Esther’s grown-up years in the 1920s. She will be a member of the Jewish emigration to the area, where she will become part of the paramilitary group, the Zionist paramilitary force whose “goal was to defend Jewish settlements from hostile actions” and which would eventually form the foundation of the Israel's military.

Those are huge topics to tackle, but having presented them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s frustrating that this book 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 motivations that must connect to narrative construction, Esther becomes a substitute parent for another of the family's daughters, and delivers to a baby boy, the boy, in the early forties – and the lion's share of this novel is the boy's story.

And now is where Irving’s obsessions reappear loudly, both regular and particular. Jimmy relocates to – naturally – the Austrian capital; there’s talk of evading the draft notice through self-mutilation (Owen Meany); a pet with a significant title (the dog's name, remember Sorrow from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, streetwalkers, writers and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

He is a duller persona than the heroine hinted to be, and the secondary figures, such as students Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s tutor Annelies Eissler, are underdeveloped too. There are a few enjoyable episodes – Jimmy deflowering; a fight where a couple of bullies get assaulted with a support and a tire pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not once been a nuanced novelist, but that is is not the issue. He has consistently reiterated his points, telegraphed narrative turns and allowed them to build up in the reader’s imagination before leading them to fruition in lengthy, surprising, funny scenes. For instance, in Irving’s novels, physical elements tend to go missing: think of the oral part in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces echo through the narrative. In the book, a key character is deprived of an arm – but we merely learn 30 pages before the finish.

Esther reappears toward the end in the story, but only with a eleventh-hour sense of concluding. We do not do find out the entire narrative of her time in the Middle East. Queen Esther is a failure from a author who once gave such joy. That’s the negative aspect. The upside is that The Cider House Rules – revisiting it together with this novel – yet holds up excellently, four decades later. So read that as an alternative: it’s much longer as the new novel, but far as enjoyable.