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If some novelists experience an peak period, in which they achieve the pinnacle time after time, then American novelist John Irving’s extended through a sequence of several fat, rewarding works, from his late-seventies hit The World According to Garp to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Those were expansive, witty, warm works, linking protagonists he calls “misfits” to social issues from women's rights to reproductive rights.

Since Owen Meany, it’s been waning outcomes, save in size. His most recent work, the 2022 release His Last Chairlift Novel, was 900 pages long of themes Irving had explored more skillfully in earlier novels (inability to speak, short stature, trans issues), with a lengthy film script in the heart to extend it – as if padding were necessary.

So we approach a new Irving with caution but still a faint flame of hope, which burns hotter when we find out that His Queen Esther Novel – a mere 432 pages – “revisits the universe of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties book is part of Irving’s very best novels, located mostly in an children's home in St Cloud’s, Maine, run by Dr Wilbur Larch and his assistant Homer Wells.

This novel is a failure from a author who in the past gave such delight

In The Cider House Rules, Irving discussed pregnancy termination and acceptance with vibrancy, wit and an comprehensive understanding. And it was a major work because it moved past the themes that were becoming annoying tics in his novels: wrestling, ursine creatures, the city of Vienna, prostitution.

The novel begins in the imaginary community of Penacook, New Hampshire in the twentieth century's dawn, where the Winslow couple adopt young orphan the title character from St Cloud's home. We are a a number of decades prior to the action of His Earlier Novel, yet Wilbur Larch is still recognisable: already using ether, adored by his caregivers, beginning every address with “At St Cloud's...” But his role in this novel is confined to these opening parts.

The family worry about bringing up Esther correctly: she’s Jewish, and “in what way could they help a adolescent Jewish girl discover her identity?” To answer that, we move forward to Esther’s later life in the Roaring Twenties. She will be a member of the Jewish emigration to the area, where she will enter Haganah, the Zionist militant force whose “goal was to defend Jewish communities from opposition” and which would later become the foundation of the IDF.

Such are massive topics to take on, but having presented them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s disappointing that Queen Esther is not really about the orphanage and Dr Larch, it’s all the more disappointing that it’s also not about the main character. For motivations that must relate to narrative construction, Esther ends up as a gestational carrier for a different of the family's offspring, and gives birth to a baby boy, the boy, in World War II era – and the majority of this story is his narrative.

And here is where Irving’s fixations come roaring back, both common and particular. Jimmy relocates to – where else? – Vienna; there’s mention of avoiding the military conscription through bodily injury (Owen Meany); a pet with a significant title (the dog's name, meet Sorrow from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, prostitutes, novelists and penises (Irving’s passim).

Jimmy is a more mundane character than the female lead suggested to be, and the minor characters, such as students the pair, and Jimmy’s teacher Annelies Eissler, are flat too. There are several amusing episodes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a confrontation where a few thugs get beaten with a crutch and a air pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not ever been a delicate writer, but that is is not the problem. He has repeatedly restated his arguments, telegraphed narrative turns and let them to gather in the reader’s imagination before taking them to fruition in long, surprising, amusing scenes. For case, in Irving’s works, anatomical features tend to disappear: think of the oral part in The Garp Novel, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces resonate through the story. In this novel, a major character loses an arm – but we only discover thirty pages the conclusion.

Esther comes back toward the end in the novel, but just with a final sense of wrapping things up. We not once discover the entire story of her experiences in the region. This novel is a failure from a author who previously gave such joy. That’s the bad news. The positive note is that Cider House – revisiting it alongside this novel – yet stands up beautifully, four decades later. So choose the earlier work as an alternative: it’s much longer as this book, but a dozen times as enjoyable.