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If certain authors enjoy an peak phase, in which they achieve the heights consistently, then American writer John Irving’s lasted through a sequence of several fat, rewarding novels, from his 1978 breakthrough His Garp Novel to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Such were rich, humorous, big-hearted works, tying figures he calls “outsiders” to social issues from feminism to abortion.

Since Owen Meany, it’s been waning outcomes, aside from in page length. His previous book, the 2022 release The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages in length of themes Irving had explored better in prior works (selective mutism, restricted growth, transgenderism), with a lengthy screenplay in the center to extend it – as if filler were needed.

Therefore we approach a recent Irving with caution but still a faint flame of expectation, which glows brighter when we learn that His Queen Esther Novel – a mere 432 pages in length – “returns to the setting of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties work is among Irving’s finest novels, taking place largely in an orphanage in the town of St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Larch and his apprentice Homer Wells.

The book is a letdown from a writer who previously gave such joy

In Cider House, Irving explored termination and identity with vibrancy, comedy and an all-encompassing understanding. And it was a significant novel because it left behind the topics that were turning into repetitive habits in his novels: wrestling, bears, Austrian capital, prostitution.

This book starts in the fictional community of the Penacook area in the beginning of the 1900s, where Thomas and Constance Winslow take in young orphan the protagonist from the orphanage. We are a a number of decades ahead of the storyline of The Cider House Rules, yet Dr Larch is still familiar: even then addicted to anesthetic, respected by his staff, opening every talk with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his appearance in the book is limited to these initial scenes.

The couple worry about bringing up Esther well: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how might they help a adolescent girl of Jewish descent understand her place?” To address that, we flash forward to Esther’s adulthood in the 1920s. She will be a member of the Jewish emigration to Palestine, where she will join the paramilitary group, the pro-Zionist paramilitary force whose “goal was to safeguard Jewish communities from opposition” and which would later form the foundation of the IDF.

These are huge themes to take on, but having brought in them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is hardly about St Cloud's and Wilbur Larch, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s additionally not really concerning Esther. For motivations that must connect to story mechanics, Esther becomes a substitute parent for one more of the family's daughters, and bears to a son, Jimmy, in 1941 – and the bulk of this book is his narrative.

And here is where Irving’s obsessions reappear loudly, both common and particular. Jimmy relocates to – of course – the Austrian capital; there’s talk of avoiding the military conscription through self-harm (His Earlier Book); a dog with a meaningful title (the animal, meet Sorrow from His Hotel Novel); as well as wrestling, streetwalkers, writers and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

The character is a less interesting character than the heroine promised to be, and the secondary players, such as pupils the pair, and Jimmy’s teacher Eissler, are underdeveloped too. There are a few nice set pieces – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a fight where a few thugs get battered with a crutch and a bicycle pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not ever been a delicate writer, but that is isn't the difficulty. He has repeatedly repeated his points, hinted at plot developments and allowed them to accumulate in the viewer's mind before leading them to fruition in extended, surprising, entertaining sequences. For case, in Irving’s novels, physical elements tend to go missing: recall the speech organ in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those losses reverberate through the plot. In the book, a key person loses an upper extremity – but we just learn 30 pages later the finish.

She comes back late in the novel, but merely with a last-minute feeling of concluding. We not once do find out the entire story of her time in the Middle East. Queen Esther is a letdown from a novelist who once gave such delight. That’s the downside. The good news is that Cider House – revisiting it together with this book – even now stands up wonderfully, after forty years. So choose the earlier work instead: it’s double the length as the new novel, but far as enjoyable.