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If a few novelists enjoy an peak period, during which they hit the heights time after time, then U.S. writer John Irving’s extended through a series of four substantial, rewarding novels, from his 1978 success Garp to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Those were generous, humorous, warm works, tying figures he calls “outsiders” to societal topics from gender equality to termination.

Since Owen Meany, it’s been waning returns, save in word count. His most recent book, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was 900 pages of topics Irving had examined more skillfully in previous novels (mutism, dwarfism, transgenderism), with a lengthy film script in the middle to extend it – as if filler were required.

Thus we come to a latest Irving with care but still a small spark of hope, which shines hotter when we learn that Queen Esther – a only four hundred thirty-two pages – “revisits the setting of The Cider House Novel”. That 1985 book is one of Irving’s finest works, set primarily in an children's home in St Cloud’s, Maine, managed by Dr Larch and his apprentice Homer Wells.

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

In Cider House, Irving explored termination and acceptance with richness, humor and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a important novel because it moved past the themes that were evolving into repetitive habits in his works: wrestling, wild bears, the city of Vienna, prostitution.

The novel opens in the imaginary town of New Hampshire's Penacook in the early 20th century, where Thomas and Constance Winslow take in teenage foundling Esther from St Cloud’s. We are a a number of decades ahead of the action of Cider House, yet Wilbur Larch is still familiar: still addicted to anesthetic, beloved by his nurses, opening every address with “At St Cloud's...” But his role in Queen Esther is restricted to these opening scenes.

The couple are concerned about parenting Esther well: she’s from a Jewish background, and “in what way could they help a adolescent Jewish female discover her identity?” To tackle that, we move forward to Esther’s grown-up years in the Roaring Twenties. She will be involved of the Jewish exodus to the area, where she will become part of Haganah, the pro-Zionist armed organisation whose “goal was to defend Jewish settlements from opposition” and which would eventually become the foundation of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Those are massive topics to take on, but having presented them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s regrettable that the novel is hardly about the orphanage and Dr Larch, it’s even more disappointing that it’s additionally not focused on the main character. For causes that must involve story mechanics, Esther ends up as a substitute parent for another of the Winslows’ children, and bears to a son, Jimmy, in the early forties – and the bulk of this novel is Jimmy’s tale.

And now is where Irving’s preoccupations reappear loudly, both typical and distinct. Jimmy relocates to – naturally – the Austrian capital; there’s discussion of evading the draft notice through self-mutilation (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a dog with a significant designation (the dog's name, meet the canine from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, prostitutes, novelists and male anatomy (Irving’s recurring).

Jimmy is a less interesting persona than Esther promised to be, and the supporting figures, such as young people the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher Eissler, are underdeveloped as well. There are several amusing episodes – Jimmy deflowering; a fight where a few bullies get assaulted with a walking aid and a bicycle pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not once been a delicate novelist, but that is not the problem. He has consistently restated his points, hinted at story twists and let them to accumulate in the reader’s imagination before leading them to completion in long, surprising, entertaining scenes. For example, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to go missing: recall the tongue in Garp, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those losses reverberate through the narrative. In Queen Esther, a key character suffers the loss of an limb – but we only find out thirty pages the end.

The protagonist comes back in the final part in the novel, but merely with a last-minute sense of wrapping things up. We never learn the full narrative of her life in the region. The book is a disappointment from a author who once gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The upside is that The Cider House Rules – revisiting it in parallel to this work – yet remains wonderfully, after forty years. So read that instead: it’s much longer as the new novel, but a dozen times as good.