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If certain novelists experience an golden period, during which they achieve the pinnacle repeatedly, then American novelist John Irving’s extended through a run of four substantial, rewarding works, from his 1978 breakthrough The World According to Garp to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. These were expansive, humorous, warm novels, tying protagonists he refers to as “misfits” to societal topics from feminism to reproductive rights.

Since A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing returns, save in page length. His most recent work, 2022’s The Chairlift Book, was 900 pages in length of themes Irving had delved into more skillfully in earlier works (mutism, restricted growth, transgenderism), with a 200-page script in the center to extend it – as if padding were necessary.

Therefore we come to a recent Irving with care but still a faint spark of hope, which burns brighter when we discover that His Queen Esther Novel – a only 432 pages – “revisits the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That 1985 work is among Irving’s very best novels, taking place largely in an orphanage in the town of St Cloud’s, run by Dr Larch and his protege Wells.

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

In The Cider House Rules, Irving discussed abortion and identity with vibrancy, humor and an total empathy. And it was a significant book because it abandoned the topics that were evolving into repetitive patterns in his books: the sport of wrestling, ursine creatures, Vienna, the oldest profession.

The novel starts in the made-up community of New Hampshire's Penacook in the early 20th century, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow take in teenage ward the protagonist from St Cloud’s. We are a a number of decades prior to the storyline of Cider House, yet Wilbur Larch stays familiar: still using the drug, adored by his nurses, starting every speech with “In this place...” But his role in Queen Esther is limited to these initial sections.

The family are concerned about bringing up Esther well: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how might they help a adolescent Jewish girl understand her place?” To address that, we jump ahead to Esther’s grown-up years in the twenties era. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to the region, where she will enter Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary force whose “mission was to protect Jewish communities from opposition” and which would later become the basis of the Israeli Defense Forces.

These are huge topics to address, but having introduced them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s regrettable that this book is not actually about the orphanage and the doctor, it’s even more disappointing that it’s likewise not focused on the main character. For motivations that must connect to narrative construction, Esther becomes a substitute parent for one more of the couple's offspring, and bears to a male child, Jimmy, in 1941 – and the majority of this story is the boy's tale.

And here is where Irving’s obsessions reappear loudly, both typical and particular. Jimmy relocates to – of course – the city; there’s discussion of dodging the Vietnam draft through self-mutilation (Owen Meany); a pet with a significant designation (Hard Rain, meet the earlier dog from His Hotel Novel); as well as the sport, sex workers, authors and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

He is a more mundane persona than the female lead promised to be, and the secondary figures, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s tutor the tutor, are flat as well. There are several amusing episodes – Jimmy deflowering; a brawl where a handful of ruffians get assaulted with a crutch and a bicycle pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has never been a nuanced author, but that is not the problem. He has consistently restated his arguments, telegraphed plot developments and allowed them to build up in the audience's mind before leading them to fruition in extended, jarring, entertaining moments. For case, in Irving’s works, body parts tend to go missing: remember the speech organ in The Garp Novel, the digit in Owen Meany. Those absences reverberate through the story. In this novel, a central person suffers the loss of an upper extremity – but we only learn thirty pages later the finish.

Esther reappears toward the end in the book, but only with a eleventh-hour sense of concluding. We never do find out the entire story of her life in the region. Queen Esther is a disappointment from a author who once gave such delight. That’s the negative aspect. The upside is that Cider House – upon rereading in parallel to this novel – still holds up excellently, 40 years on. So choose it as an alternative: it’s much longer as Queen Esther, but far as good.