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If a few writers enjoy an peak period, in which they achieve the summit repeatedly, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s ran through a series of four substantial, satisfying works, from his 1978 success The World According to Garp to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. Such were expansive, funny, compassionate books, tying figures he calls “misfits” to societal topics from gender equality to reproductive rights.

Following A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been waning results, except in word count. His last novel, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages of topics Irving had examined more skillfully in prior works (mutism, restricted growth, gender identity), with a lengthy script in the middle to extend it – as if extra material were required.

Thus we look at a recent Irving with reservation but still a faint flame of optimism, which shines brighter when we discover that His Queen Esther Novel – a mere 432 pages – “returns to the world of The Cider House Rules”. That 1985 book is part of Irving’s very best books, set mostly in an children's home in St Cloud’s, Maine, operated by Dr Wilbur Larch and his protege Wells.

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

In His Cider House Novel, Irving explored abortion and belonging with richness, comedy and an comprehensive understanding. And it was a significant novel because it moved past the themes that were becoming repetitive tics in his books: wrestling, ursine creatures, the city of Vienna, sex work.

The novel starts in the made-up community of the Penacook area in the early 20th century, where the Winslow couple take in 14-year-old orphan Esther from St Cloud’s. We are a a number of years ahead of the action of The Cider House Rules, yet Dr Larch stays familiar: even then dependent on anesthetic, adored by his staff, opening every talk with “In this place...” But his role in the book is confined to these initial parts.

The couple worry about bringing up Esther properly: she’s Jewish, and “how might they help a teenage girl of Jewish descent understand her place?” To tackle that, we move forward to Esther’s adulthood in the Roaring Twenties. She will be a member of the Jewish migration to the region, where she will enter the paramilitary group, the pro-Zionist armed group whose “goal was to protect Jewish settlements from opposition” and which would eventually form the foundation of the IDF.

Those are massive topics to address, but having brought in them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s disappointing that the novel is hardly about St Cloud's and the doctor, it’s even more disheartening that it’s likewise not really concerning the titular figure. For causes that must relate to story mechanics, Esther turns into a substitute parent for a different of the family's children, and gives birth to a baby boy, Jimmy, in the early forties – and the majority of this book is his tale.

And here is where Irving’s fixations reappear loudly, both typical and distinct. Jimmy moves to – naturally – Vienna; there’s talk of avoiding the military conscription through self-harm (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a pet with a symbolic name (Hard Rain, remember Sorrow from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, sex workers, authors and penises (Irving’s passim).

Jimmy is a duller character than Esther suggested to be, and the minor players, such as pupils the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher Eissler, are underdeveloped too. There are several nice set pieces – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a brawl where a couple of thugs get assaulted with a walking aid and a tire pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not ever been a nuanced novelist, but that is is not the problem. He has always restated his arguments, telegraphed story twists and allowed them to accumulate in the audience's imagination before bringing them to resolution in long, jarring, entertaining sequences. For example, in Irving’s works, physical elements tend to disappear: remember the tongue in Garp, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those losses echo through the plot. In Queen Esther, a major person suffers the loss of an upper extremity – but we just learn thirty pages the end.

Esther reappears late in the novel, but just with a last-minute impression of ending the story. We never learn the full narrative of her time in Palestine and Israel. This novel is a failure from a writer who previously gave such pleasure. That’s the negative aspect. The upside is that Cider House – upon rereading alongside this novel – yet stands up excellently, 40 years on. So read the earlier work as an alternative: it’s much longer as Queen Esther, but 12 times as great.