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If certain writers have an golden era, during which they hit the heights time after time, then U.S. author John Irving’s lasted through a series of several long, gratifying novels, from his 1978 breakthrough The World According to Garp to the 1989 release Owen Meany. Those were rich, funny, compassionate books, tying figures he describes as “outliers” to cultural themes from gender equality to abortion.

Since Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing results, except in word count. His most recent novel, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was 900 pages of themes Irving had delved into better in prior works (mutism, short stature, trans issues), with a 200-page script in the middle to fill it out – as if filler were necessary.

Therefore we look at a new Irving with care but still a small flame of optimism, which shines hotter when we discover that Queen Esther – a just 432 pages – “revisits the setting of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 book is one of Irving’s finest novels, located largely in an institution in Maine's St Cloud’s, run by Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Homer.

Queen Esther is a failure from a writer who in the past gave such pleasure

In His Cider House Novel, Irving explored pregnancy termination and identity with vibrancy, wit and an total empathy. And it was a significant book because it abandoned the subjects that were becoming repetitive habits in his works: wrestling, ursine creatures, Vienna, prostitution.

The novel opens in the imaginary community of New Hampshire's Penacook in the beginning of the 1900s, where Thomas and Constance Winslow take in 14-year-old orphan the protagonist from St Cloud's home. We are a several years before the action of Cider House, yet Dr Larch remains familiar: already dependent on the drug, respected by his nurses, beginning every speech with “In this place...” But his appearance in this novel is restricted to these initial parts.

The Winslows worry about parenting Esther well: she’s Jewish, and “in what way could they help a young Jewish female understand her place?” To tackle that, we jump ahead to Esther’s adulthood in the 1920s. She will be a member of the Jewish exodus to the area, where she will join Haganah, the pro-Zionist militant group whose “purpose was to defend Jewish settlements from hostile actions” and which would later form the foundation of the IDF.

These are huge subjects to address, but having introduced them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s frustrating that the novel is hardly about the orphanage and Wilbur Larch, it’s all the more upsetting that it’s additionally not really concerning the titular figure. For motivations that must involve story mechanics, Esther becomes a surrogate mother for a different of the couple's offspring, and bears to a baby boy, James, in 1941 – and the majority of this book is the boy's narrative.

And at this point is where Irving’s obsessions come roaring back, both typical and distinct. Jimmy goes to – of course – Vienna; there’s mention of avoiding the draft notice through self-mutilation (Owen Meany); a dog with a symbolic designation (the animal, meet the earlier dog from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, sex workers, authors and male anatomy (Irving’s throughout).

The character is a more mundane character than the female lead suggested to be, and the minor figures, such as students Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s teacher Eissler, are one-dimensional as well. There are a few nice scenes – Jimmy deflowering; a brawl where a few thugs get battered with a walking aid and a air pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has not ever been a subtle novelist, but that is is not the difficulty. He has always repeated his ideas, foreshadowed narrative turns and let them to build up in the viewer's mind before bringing them to resolution in lengthy, shocking, funny moments. For instance, in Irving’s works, anatomical features tend to disappear: remember the oral part in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those absences reverberate through the story. In Queen Esther, a major figure is deprived of an arm – but we only learn 30 pages before the end.

She comes back toward the end in the story, but just with a last-minute feeling of concluding. We not once learn the complete account of her time in the region. Queen Esther is a disappointment from a writer who once gave such joy. That’s the negative aspect. The positive note is that His Classic Novel – I reread it in parallel to this work – even now remains beautifully, 40 years on. So read it in its place: it’s double the length as the new novel, but a dozen times as good.