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If a few novelists have an imperial era, where they hit the pinnacle repeatedly, then U.S. writer John Irving’s ran through a sequence of several substantial, satisfying novels, from his late-seventies success The World According to Garp to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. Such were generous, humorous, big-hearted novels, linking protagonists he refers to as “misfits” to cultural themes from women's rights to reproductive rights.

Following Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing results, save in page length. His most recent novel, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages long of themes Irving had examined more skillfully in prior works (selective mutism, restricted growth, gender identity), with a lengthy screenplay in the heart to extend it – as if padding were necessary.

Therefore we look at a recent Irving with reservation but still a tiny glimmer of expectation, which burns stronger when we discover that Queen Esther – a just four hundred thirty-two pages – “goes back to the world of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties novel is among Irving’s top-tier books, taking place primarily in an orphanage in Maine's St Cloud’s, operated by Dr Larch and his apprentice Homer.

This novel is a disappointment from a novelist who once gave such delight

In His Cider House Novel, Irving wrote about abortion and acceptance with colour, humor and an all-encompassing understanding. And it was a significant novel because it moved past the topics that were turning into tiresome habits in his books: wrestling, wild bears, Vienna, sex work.

The novel begins in the made-up village of New Hampshire's Penacook in the beginning of the 1900s, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow take in 14-year-old ward the protagonist from the orphanage. We are a a number of generations before the events of Cider House, yet Wilbur Larch is still familiar: already using the drug, adored by his staff, beginning every address with “In this place...” But his role in this novel is limited to these initial sections.

The Winslows fret about bringing up Esther well: she’s Jewish, and “how might they help a teenage Jewish girl understand her place?” To tackle that, we flash forward to Esther’s adulthood in the twenties era. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to the area, where she will become part of the Haganah, the Jewish nationalist paramilitary force whose “mission was to protect Jewish settlements from opposition” and which would subsequently become the basis of the IDF.

Such are enormous topics to take on, but having brought in them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is not really about St Cloud's and Wilbur Larch, it’s even more upsetting that it’s also not really concerning Esther. For motivations that must relate to plot engineering, Esther turns into a substitute parent for another of the Winslows’ offspring, and bears to a son, James, in the early forties – and the bulk of this novel is Jimmy’s story.

And here is where Irving’s fixations come roaring back, both typical and distinct. Jimmy moves to – of course – the Austrian capital; there’s talk of dodging the Vietnam draft through self-harm (His Earlier Book); a dog with a significant designation (the animal, remember the canine from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, sex workers, novelists and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

The character is a more mundane persona than the female lead hinted to be, and the supporting players, such as young people the two students, and Jimmy’s instructor Annelies Eissler, are underdeveloped also. There are several amusing episodes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a brawl where a handful of thugs get battered with a support and a air pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has not ever been a subtle novelist, but that is is not the issue. He has always reiterated his points, telegraphed story twists and enabled them to build up in the viewer's thoughts before leading them to fruition in long, jarring, amusing scenes. For example, in Irving’s novels, physical elements tend to disappear: remember the oral part in Garp, the finger in His Owen Book. Those absences echo through the plot. In the book, a key person loses an limb – but we just find out 30 pages before the finish.

The protagonist reappears in the final part in the book, but merely with a eleventh-hour feeling of wrapping things up. We never do find out the complete account of her life in Palestine and Israel. The book is a letdown from a writer who in the past gave such delight. That’s the bad news. The good news is that His Classic Novel – I reread it in parallel to this novel – yet stands up wonderfully, after forty years. So pick up the earlier work in its place: it’s double the length as the new novel, but 12 times as good.