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If certain novelists have an golden phase, in which they hit the summit consistently, then U.S. author John Irving’s ran through a run of several long, satisfying books, from his late-seventies breakthrough Garp to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. Those were expansive, witty, compassionate novels, connecting figures he describes as “misfits” to cultural themes from gender equality to reproductive rights.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been waning returns, aside from in page length. His previous book, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was 900 pages in length of themes Irving had examined more skillfully in earlier works (selective mutism, restricted growth, gender identity), with a 200-page film script in the center to extend it – as if filler were needed.

So we come to a new Irving with reservation but still a tiny flame of expectation, which burns stronger when we discover that His Queen Esther Novel – a just 432 pages long – “returns to the world of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 novel is among Irving’s finest works, located largely in an children's home in the town of St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Larch and his assistant Homer Wells.

Queen Esther is a disappointment from a novelist who previously gave such pleasure

In His Cider House Novel, Irving discussed abortion and identity with richness, comedy and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a major work because it moved past the topics that were turning into repetitive patterns in his novels: the sport of wrestling, ursine creatures, the city of Vienna, sex work.

This book opens in the made-up town of New Hampshire's Penacook in the early 20th century, where the Winslow couple adopt teenage foundling Esther from St Cloud's home. We are a few decades before the action of His Earlier Novel, yet Dr Larch remains identifiable: even then addicted to anesthetic, beloved by his nurses, beginning every talk with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his role in Queen Esther is confined to these early scenes.

The family fret about bringing up Esther properly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how could they help a teenage girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To address that, we jump ahead to Esther’s adulthood in the Roaring Twenties. She will be a member of the Jewish emigration to the area, where she will become part of the paramilitary group, the Zionist armed group whose “mission was to safeguard Jewish communities from opposition” and which would subsequently establish the basis of the IDF.

These are enormous topics to take on, but having brought in them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s disappointing that the novel is not really about the orphanage and Wilbur Larch, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s likewise not focused on Esther. For reasons that must relate to story mechanics, Esther turns into a substitute parent for one more of the family's daughters, and bears to a son, Jimmy, in 1941 – and the bulk of this novel is Jimmy’s story.

And at this point is where Irving’s fixations come roaring back, both regular and specific. Jimmy moves to – naturally – Vienna; there’s discussion of dodging the draft notice through self-harm (His Earlier Book); a pet with a symbolic title (the animal, meet the canine from His Hotel Novel); as well as grappling, sex workers, novelists and male anatomy (Irving’s passim).

He is a more mundane character than Esther hinted to be, and the minor characters, such as pupils the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher Eissler, are one-dimensional too. There are some amusing set pieces – Jimmy losing his virginity; a confrontation where a handful of bullies get assaulted with a crutch and a air pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not once been a subtle author, but that is is not the issue. He has repeatedly repeated his ideas, telegraphed story twists and enabled them to gather in the audience's imagination before bringing them to fruition in extended, jarring, entertaining sequences. For example, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to be lost: remember the tongue in Garp, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those absences echo through the story. In the book, a central person loses an upper extremity – but we just find out thirty pages later the conclusion.

Esther reappears late in the book, but only with a final sense of concluding. We never do find out the full account of her life in Palestine and Israel. The book is a failure from a novelist who once gave such delight. That’s the bad news. The upside is that The Cider House Rules – revisiting it in parallel to this work – yet stands up excellently, four decades later. So read it as an alternative: it’s twice as long as Queen Esther, but far as great.