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If some novelists experience an peak era, where they hit the pinnacle repeatedly, then American author John Irving’s extended through a run of several substantial, gratifying works, from his late-seventies success The World According to Garp to 1989’s Owen Meany. Such were expansive, funny, warm works, connecting figures he refers to as “outliers” to cultural themes from feminism to abortion.

Since A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing returns, except in page length. His previous novel, the 2022 release His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages in length of themes Irving had delved into better in prior works (mutism, short stature, transgenderism), with a 200-page script in the heart to extend it – as if extra material were necessary.

So we look at a recent Irving with caution but still a tiny flame of optimism, which shines brighter when we find out that Queen Esther – a only 432 pages long – “revisits the universe of His Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties book is one of Irving’s top-tier novels, set mostly in an institution in the town of St Cloud’s, operated by Wilbur Larch and his protege Wells.

Queen Esther is a letdown from a writer who in the past gave such joy

In The Cider House Rules, Irving explored pregnancy termination and belonging with richness, comedy and an all-encompassing understanding. And it was a significant novel because it left behind the subjects that were becoming tiresome tics in his works: the sport of wrestling, bears, Vienna, sex work.

The novel begins in the fictional community of the Penacook area in the beginning of the 1900s, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow take in 14-year-old orphan the protagonist from St Cloud's home. We are a several generations prior to the action of His Earlier Novel, yet the doctor stays familiar: still addicted to the drug, beloved by his staff, opening every talk with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his role in this novel is limited to these initial sections.

The family worry about bringing up Esther correctly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how could they help a young girl of Jewish descent discover her identity?” To address that, we flash forward to Esther’s later life in the Roaring Twenties. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to Palestine, where she will enter the paramilitary group, the pro-Zionist militant organisation whose “mission was to protect Jewish towns from Arab attacks” and which would subsequently establish the basis of the Israel's military.

Such are huge themes to address, but having introduced them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s disappointing that this book is hardly about the orphanage and Dr Larch, it’s all the more upsetting that it’s additionally not about the main character. For reasons that must involve story mechanics, Esther turns into a surrogate mother for a different of the family's offspring, and gives birth to a male child, James, in the early forties – and the lion's share of this book is the boy's tale.

And now is where Irving’s obsessions reappear loudly, both common and specific. Jimmy moves to – of course – the Austrian capital; there’s discussion of evading the Vietnam draft through bodily injury (His Earlier Book); a canine with a meaningful designation (the animal, meet the earlier dog from His Hotel Novel); as well as wrestling, prostitutes, novelists and penises (Irving’s recurring).

The character is a more mundane persona than Esther suggested to be, and the minor players, such as pupils the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher Eissler, are one-dimensional also. There are several nice scenes – Jimmy deflowering; a brawl where a few ruffians get assaulted with a walking aid and a bicycle pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has not ever been a nuanced author, but that is isn't the difficulty. He has always reiterated his arguments, telegraphed plot developments and allowed them to gather in the audience's thoughts before leading them to completion in lengthy, surprising, entertaining scenes. For case, in Irving’s novels, anatomical features tend to be lost: remember the speech organ in Garp, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those losses resonate through the story. In Queen Esther, a major figure suffers the loss of an limb – but we only discover thirty pages later the end.

The protagonist returns toward the end in the story, but merely with a last-minute impression of wrapping things up. We not once learn the entire story of her life in the Middle East. Queen Esther is a letdown from a writer who previously gave such pleasure. That’s the downside. The good news is that His Classic Novel – upon rereading in parallel to this book – yet holds up excellently, after forty years. So choose it as an alternative: it’s much longer as this book, but far as great.