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If a few writers have an peak period, during which they achieve the pinnacle consistently, then U.S. author John Irving’s lasted through a sequence of several fat, satisfying books, from his late-seventies success The World According to Garp to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. Such were rich, humorous, warm novels, linking characters he describes as “outliers” to societal topics from gender equality to abortion.

Following His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been diminishing outcomes, save in page length. His last book, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was 900 pages long of topics Irving had explored better in earlier books (mutism, short stature, gender identity), with a two-hundred-page screenplay in the center to fill it out – as if padding were needed.

Thus we come to a new Irving with care but still a tiny flame of hope, which shines brighter when we discover that Queen Esther – a just four hundred thirty-two pages long – “goes back to the setting of The Cider House Rules”. That 1985 book is part of Irving’s very best books, located largely in an children's home in St Cloud’s, Maine, operated by Dr Larch and his assistant Homer Wells.

The book is a disappointment from a author who previously gave such joy

In His Cider House Novel, Irving explored abortion and acceptance with colour, wit and an all-encompassing compassion. And it was a important book because it moved past the subjects that were turning into repetitive habits in his works: the sport of wrestling, bears, the city of Vienna, prostitution.

The novel opens in the imaginary village of the Penacook area in the beginning of the 1900s, where the Winslow couple adopt teenage orphan the title character from St Cloud’s. We are a few years before the storyline of His Earlier Novel, yet the doctor stays familiar: still addicted to ether, beloved by his caregivers, opening every talk with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his appearance in this novel is limited to these initial sections.

The family worry about parenting Esther properly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “in what way could they help a adolescent Jewish female discover her identity?” To answer that, we move forward to Esther’s later life in the 1920s. She will be a member of the Jewish migration to Palestine, where she will join Haganah, the pro-Zionist armed organisation whose “goal was to safeguard Jewish communities from opposition” and which would later become the basis of the IDF.

Those are massive themes to tackle, but having introduced them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s regrettable that Queen Esther is not actually about St Cloud’s and the doctor, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s additionally not really concerning Esther. For causes that must relate to story mechanics, Esther becomes a gestational carrier for one more of the Winslows’ children, and gives birth to a son, the boy, in World War II era – and the lion's share of this book is the boy's tale.

And at this point is where Irving’s obsessions come roaring back, both typical and particular. Jimmy goes to – where else? – the city; there’s discussion of dodging the Vietnam draft through bodily injury (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a canine with a meaningful name (Hard Rain, remember the canine from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, sex workers, authors and penises (Irving’s recurring).

He is a more mundane character than Esther suggested to be, and the supporting characters, such as young people Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s teacher Eissler, are flat too. There are several enjoyable scenes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a fight where a few thugs get assaulted with a crutch and a bicycle pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not once been a delicate writer, but that is not the problem. He has repeatedly restated his arguments, telegraphed story twists and let them to accumulate in the audience's thoughts before leading them to resolution in lengthy, surprising, entertaining sequences. For case, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to be lost: think of the tongue in Garp, the digit in His Owen Book. Those absences resonate through the story. In the book, a key figure loses an upper extremity – but we merely find out thirty pages later the conclusion.

She returns in the final part in the story, but merely with a final feeling of concluding. We not once learn the entire narrative of her life in Palestine and Israel. Queen Esther is a disappointment from a novelist who previously gave such delight. That’s the negative aspect. The positive note is that The Cider House Rules – I reread it together with this novel – still holds up beautifully, four decades later. So read it instead: it’s much longer as Queen Esther, but far as great.