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If a few writers experience an peak period, where they achieve the summit repeatedly, then American author John Irving’s lasted through a run of four substantial, rewarding novels, from his 1978 success Garp to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Such were generous, humorous, compassionate books, tying protagonists he calls “outsiders” to societal topics from women's rights to abortion.

Since A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing outcomes, aside from in page length. His last novel, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was nine hundred pages in length of topics Irving had delved into more effectively in earlier novels (inability to speak, restricted growth, transgenderism), with a two-hundred-page screenplay in the heart to extend it – as if filler were required.

Therefore we come to a new Irving with reservation but still a small flame of expectation, which shines stronger when we find out that Queen Esther – a only four hundred thirty-two pages – “returns to the universe of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 work is among Irving’s top-tier books, taking place mostly in an orphanage in the town of St Cloud’s, managed by Wilbur Larch and his protege Homer.

Queen Esther is a disappointment from a writer who once gave such joy

In His Cider House Novel, Irving wrote about abortion and belonging with vibrancy, wit and an comprehensive understanding. And it was a significant novel because it moved past the topics that were becoming tiresome patterns in his works: the sport of wrestling, bears, Vienna, prostitution.

Queen Esther starts in the fictional community of Penacook, New Hampshire in the twentieth century's dawn, where Thomas and Constance Winslow adopt teenage ward the protagonist from St Cloud's home. We are a few generations before the action of The Cider House Rules, yet Wilbur Larch stays familiar: already dependent on anesthetic, adored by his caregivers, opening every talk with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his appearance in this novel is limited to these early parts.

The family are concerned about raising Esther well: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how could they help a teenage girl of Jewish descent discover her identity?” To answer that, we flash forward to Esther’s grown-up years in the Roaring Twenties. She will be involved of the Jewish migration to the region, where she will join Haganah, the Zionist militant group whose “goal was to defend Jewish communities from opposition” and which would subsequently establish the foundation of the IDF.

Those are huge subjects to address, but having brought in them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s regrettable that Queen Esther is not really about St Cloud's and Dr Larch, it’s all the more disappointing that it’s likewise not about the main character. For causes that must relate to story mechanics, Esther becomes a substitute parent for one more of the couple's daughters, and bears to a male child, Jimmy, in the early forties – and the lion's share of this book is his tale.

And here is where Irving’s fixations come roaring back, both regular and particular. Jimmy goes to – of course – Vienna; there’s discussion of evading the Vietnam draft through self-harm (Owen Meany); a canine with a meaningful title (the dog's name, remember the canine from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, sex workers, authors and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

The character is a duller persona than the heroine hinted to be, and the supporting figures, such as young people the two students, and Jimmy’s tutor Annelies Eissler, are underdeveloped also. There are several enjoyable scenes – Jimmy deflowering; a fight where a few bullies get assaulted with a crutch and a bicycle pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has never been a delicate writer, but that is is not the problem. He has always reiterated his points, telegraphed plot developments and enabled them to build up in the viewer's imagination before bringing them to completion in extended, shocking, entertaining sequences. For instance, in Irving’s works, anatomical features tend to disappear: think of the tongue in Garp, the hand part in His Owen Book. Those missing pieces resonate through the plot. In the book, a major character is deprived of an upper extremity – but we just learn thirty pages the end.

She reappears in the final part in the book, but only with a eleventh-hour sense of ending the story. We not once discover the entire narrative of her experiences in the region. The book is a letdown from a novelist who once gave such joy. That’s the negative aspect. The positive note is that The Cider House Rules – upon rereading alongside this work – yet holds up excellently, four decades later. So read that in its place: it’s much longer as Queen Esther, but a dozen times as great.