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If certain authors enjoy an golden phase, in which they achieve the pinnacle time after time, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s extended through a sequence of several substantial, gratifying works, from his 1978 hit The World According to Garp to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. These were rich, witty, compassionate works, tying characters he refers to as “misfits” to cultural themes from women's rights to reproductive rights.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been declining returns, except in size. His previous book, 2022’s The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages long of themes Irving had explored more skillfully in previous works (inability to speak, restricted growth, transgenderism), with a lengthy screenplay in the middle to fill it out – as if padding were needed.

Thus we come to a latest Irving with caution but still a faint spark of expectation, which glows hotter when we discover that Queen Esther – a just four hundred thirty-two pages – “goes back to the setting of His Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties book is one of Irving’s very best novels, located largely in an orphanage in the town of St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Larch and his apprentice Homer Wells.

Queen Esther is a failure from a author who once gave such joy

In Cider House, Irving explored pregnancy termination and identity with colour, humor and an comprehensive understanding. And it was a important book because it left behind the topics that were becoming tiresome habits in his books: grappling, bears, Vienna, sex work.

Queen Esther starts in the imaginary community of the Penacook area in the twentieth century's dawn, 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 events of His Earlier Novel, yet Wilbur Larch stays familiar: already addicted to anesthetic, respected by his caregivers, opening every address with “At St Cloud's...” But his appearance in this novel is confined to these initial scenes.

The Winslows are concerned about parenting Esther correctly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how could they help a adolescent Jewish female find herself?” To address that, we move forward to Esther’s later life in the twenties era. She will be a member of the Jewish migration to Palestine, where she will enter the paramilitary group, the pro-Zionist armed force whose “mission was to safeguard Jewish communities from Arab attacks” and which would subsequently form the basis of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Such are enormous subjects to address, but having presented them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s disappointing that Queen Esther is hardly about St Cloud’s and Wilbur Larch, it’s still more disappointing that it’s additionally not focused on Esther. For motivations that must connect to story mechanics, Esther becomes a surrogate mother for one more of the Winslows’ offspring, and gives birth to a male child, James, in World War II era – and the bulk of this story is his story.

And here is where Irving’s preoccupations reappear loudly, both typical and distinct. Jimmy relocates to – where else? – the Austrian capital; there’s talk of evading the draft notice through bodily injury (His Earlier Book); a pet with a meaningful name (the dog's name, meet the canine from His Hotel Novel); as well as grappling, sex workers, writers and penises (Irving’s throughout).

He is a less interesting persona than the heroine promised to be, and the minor figures, such as pupils the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher the tutor, are one-dimensional also. There are several amusing episodes – Jimmy deflowering; a confrontation where a few bullies get beaten with a crutch and a bicycle pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has never been a subtle writer, but that is not the difficulty. He has consistently repeated his points, hinted at narrative turns and let them to gather in the viewer's thoughts before leading them to fruition in long, surprising, amusing sequences. For case, in Irving’s novels, physical elements tend to be lost: recall the tongue in The Garp Novel, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those absences resonate through the narrative. In this novel, a major figure suffers the loss of an limb – but we merely find out thirty pages later the finish.

The protagonist returns in the final part in the book, but just with a last-minute feeling of wrapping things up. We do not do find out the complete account of her experiences in the Middle East. The book is a disappointment from a writer who once gave such joy. That’s the bad news. The good news is that The Cider House Rules – revisiting it alongside this work – even now remains wonderfully, after forty years. So pick up the earlier work as an alternative: it’s much longer as the new novel, but 12 times as great.