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If some writers experience an peak phase, in which they achieve the pinnacle time after time, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s lasted through a sequence of several substantial, rewarding novels, from his 1978 hit The World According to Garp to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. Those were generous, humorous, warm books, tying figures he calls “outliers” to social issues from women's rights to reproductive rights.

Following Owen Meany, it’s been declining results, aside from in size. His most recent work, the 2022 release His Last Chairlift Novel, was 900 pages in length of topics Irving had examined more effectively in previous works (mutism, dwarfism, trans issues), with a 200-page screenplay in the heart to pad it out – as if padding were necessary.

Therefore we look at a new Irving with reservation but still a tiny flame of expectation, which shines stronger when we find out that His Queen Esther Novel – a only four hundred thirty-two pages long – “returns to the setting of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties work is part of Irving’s very best works, located mostly in an children's home in the town of St Cloud’s, run by Dr Wilbur Larch and his assistant Homer Wells.

This novel is a letdown from a writer who once gave such joy

In Cider House, Irving explored termination and acceptance with colour, comedy and an comprehensive understanding. And it was a important book because it moved past the subjects that were turning into repetitive patterns in his novels: grappling, wild bears, Vienna, sex work.

Queen Esther opens in the imaginary village of Penacook, New Hampshire in the beginning of the 1900s, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow adopt 14-year-old foundling Esther from the orphanage. We are a a number of generations ahead of the storyline of The Cider House Rules, yet the doctor is still familiar: even then using anesthetic, beloved by his staff, starting every address with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his presence in this novel is restricted to these early scenes.

The family fret about raising Esther well: she’s Jewish, and “in what way could they help a adolescent Jewish female understand her place?” To address that, we flash forward to Esther’s grown-up years in the 1920s. She will be part of the Jewish emigration to the region, where she will join Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary group whose “purpose was to safeguard Jewish communities from opposition” and which would later establish the core of the Israel's military.

Those are huge subjects to take on, but having brought in them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is not actually about the orphanage and Dr Larch, it’s all the more upsetting that it’s likewise not really concerning the titular figure. For reasons that must relate to story mechanics, Esther becomes a substitute parent for one more of the couple's children, and delivers to a son, James, in the early forties – and the lion's share of this book is his tale.

And at this point is where Irving’s fixations reappear loudly, both typical and specific. Jimmy goes to – of course – the city; there’s mention of avoiding the draft notice through bodily injury (Owen Meany); a dog with a symbolic designation (the animal, remember Sorrow from His Hotel Novel); as well as the sport, prostitutes, authors and penises (Irving’s passim).

He is a more mundane persona than Esther promised to be, and the secondary characters, such as students the pair, and Jimmy’s teacher Eissler, are underdeveloped as well. There are a few enjoyable episodes – Jimmy deflowering; a fight where a couple of ruffians get battered with a crutch and a tire pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not ever been a delicate writer, but that is is not the difficulty. He has repeatedly restated his ideas, hinted at narrative turns and let them to build up in the viewer's imagination before bringing them to completion in lengthy, shocking, funny moments. For instance, in Irving’s works, physical elements tend to disappear: recall the tongue in The Garp Novel, the finger in Owen Meany. Those absences echo through the story. In Queen Esther, a major character is deprived of an upper extremity – but we just learn 30 pages the conclusion.

She comes back in the final part in the book, but just with a eleventh-hour impression of wrapping things up. We never discover the full narrative of her life in the Middle East. The book is a disappointment from a writer who once gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The good news is that His Classic Novel – upon rereading alongside this work – still holds up beautifully, after forty years. So read that instead: it’s much longer as this book, but 12 times as enjoyable.