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If certain writers experience an golden period, during which they hit the heights repeatedly, then U.S. writer John Irving’s ran through a sequence of several fat, rewarding works, from his late-seventies hit His Garp Novel to the 1989 release Owen Meany. These were generous, humorous, compassionate novels, linking protagonists he refers to as “outliers” to cultural themes from feminism to termination.

Following His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been declining outcomes, save in word count. His last book, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was 900 pages of themes Irving had delved into better in earlier books (inability to speak, short stature, gender identity), with a two-hundred-page screenplay in the middle to extend it – as if filler were required.

So we look at a recent Irving with care but still a small spark of expectation, which glows stronger when we discover that Queen Esther – a just 432 pages long – “goes back to the universe of The Cider House Novel”. That 1985 work is one of Irving’s top-tier books, located largely in an institution in St Cloud’s, Maine, operated by Dr Wilbur Larch and his protege Homer Wells.

This novel is a letdown from a novelist who previously gave such pleasure

In The Cider House Rules, Irving explored pregnancy termination and identity with colour, comedy and an comprehensive understanding. And it was a significant book because it abandoned the themes that were evolving into tiresome patterns in his novels: grappling, bears, Vienna, prostitution.

The novel starts in the imaginary village of New Hampshire's Penacook in the twentieth century's dawn, where Thomas and Constance Winslow adopt teenage orphan the protagonist from the orphanage. We are a a number of generations before the events of Cider House, yet Wilbur Larch remains recognisable: already using the drug, respected by his caregivers, starting every speech with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his presence in the book is confined to these initial sections.

The family worry about bringing up Esther properly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how could they help a teenage Jewish girl find herself?” To tackle that, we jump ahead to Esther’s later life in the 1920s. She will be a member of the Jewish migration to the area, where she will enter the paramilitary group, the Jewish nationalist paramilitary group whose “purpose was to safeguard Jewish communities from Arab attacks” and which would eventually establish the foundation of the IDF.

Such are massive subjects to take on, but having presented them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s regrettable that the novel is not actually about St Cloud's and Wilbur Larch, it’s still more upsetting that it’s also not really concerning the titular figure. For motivations that must connect to story mechanics, Esther ends up as a surrogate mother for another of the family's daughters, and delivers to a baby boy, the boy, in World War II era – and the lion's share of this story is the boy's tale.

And here is where Irving’s preoccupations come roaring back, both regular and specific. Jimmy moves to – naturally – Vienna; there’s mention of dodging the military conscription through self-harm (Owen Meany); a dog with a symbolic title (Hard Rain, recall the earlier dog from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, streetwalkers, writers and male anatomy (Irving’s passim).

Jimmy is a more mundane character than the heroine hinted to be, and the minor players, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s instructor the tutor, are one-dimensional also. There are several enjoyable episodes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a fight where a few thugs get beaten with a crutch and a tire pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not once been a delicate novelist, but that is not the problem. He has always repeated his ideas, foreshadowed narrative turns and let them to accumulate in the audience's mind before leading them to resolution in long, surprising, funny scenes. For case, in Irving’s works, anatomical features tend to go missing: recall the oral part in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those absences resonate through the narrative. In Queen Esther, a central figure loses an limb – but we only discover thirty pages later the conclusion.

The protagonist comes back late in the book, but merely with a final impression of wrapping things up. We do not do find out the entire story of her time in Palestine and Israel. Queen Esther is a failure from a novelist who in the past gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The good news is that The Cider House Rules – I reread it together with this book – even now holds up wonderfully, four decades later. So choose it as an alternative: it’s twice as long as Queen Esther, but far as great.