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If some authors experience an imperial era, where they hit the summit consistently, then American author John Irving’s extended through a series of several long, satisfying works, from his late-seventies breakthrough Garp to the 1989 release Owen Meany. Such were rich, humorous, compassionate works, connecting protagonists he calls “misfits” to social issues from gender equality to termination.

After His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been diminishing returns, aside from in size. His most recent work, 2022’s The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages of subjects Irving had examined better in prior novels (inability to speak, restricted growth, trans issues), with a two-hundred-page screenplay in the center to fill it out – as if padding were necessary.

Thus we approach a new Irving with care but still a tiny flame of expectation, which glows brighter when we find out that Queen Esther – a mere four hundred thirty-two pages – “returns to the world of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties work is among Irving’s very best works, set mostly in an orphanage in St Cloud’s, Maine, managed by Dr Larch and his apprentice Wells.

This novel is a failure from a author who once gave such joy

In Cider House, Irving discussed abortion and belonging with richness, comedy and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a major book because it abandoned the subjects that were becoming repetitive habits in his books: wrestling, wild bears, the city of Vienna, sex work.

This book opens in the fictional town of New Hampshire's Penacook in the beginning of the 1900s, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow adopt 14-year-old foundling Esther from St Cloud's home. We are a several generations prior to the action of His Earlier Novel, yet Dr Larch stays familiar: even then dependent on ether, respected by his nurses, beginning every speech with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his presence in the book is restricted to these opening scenes.

The Winslows are concerned about parenting Esther properly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how might they help a adolescent girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To tackle that, we flash forward to Esther’s adulthood in the twenties era. She will be part of the Jewish exodus to the area, where she will join the paramilitary group, the Jewish nationalist armed force whose “goal was to defend Jewish towns from hostile actions” and which would eventually become the basis of the Israel's military.

Those are enormous topics to take on, but having brought in them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s disappointing that the novel is hardly about the orphanage and Wilbur Larch, it’s still more upsetting that it’s likewise not about the titular figure. For causes that must involve story mechanics, Esther becomes a gestational carrier for another of the Winslows’ offspring, and bears to a baby boy, James, in 1941 – and the majority of this novel is the boy's story.

And at this point is where Irving’s fixations come roaring back, both common and particular. Jimmy moves to – of course – Vienna; there’s discussion of avoiding the draft notice through self-harm (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a dog with a symbolic name (the animal, remember the earlier dog from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, streetwalkers, authors and penises (Irving’s passim).

Jimmy is a duller character than the female lead promised to be, and the supporting players, such as pupils the two students, and Jimmy’s instructor the tutor, are underdeveloped as well. There are a few nice set pieces – Jimmy losing his virginity; a fight where a couple of thugs get battered with a crutch and a tire pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has not once been a subtle writer, but that is isn't the difficulty. He has always restated his arguments, foreshadowed story twists and let them to accumulate in the audience's thoughts before leading them to completion in long, shocking, funny moments. For example, in Irving’s works, physical elements tend to be lost: remember the tongue in The Garp Novel, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces echo through the plot. In this novel, a major person loses an limb – but we merely learn thirty pages before the finish.

The protagonist comes back toward the end in the book, but just with a final impression of ending the story. We not once discover the entire story of her experiences in Palestine and Israel. Queen Esther is a letdown from a writer who in the past gave such joy. That’s the bad news. The positive note is that His Classic Novel – upon rereading together with this work – even now stands up beautifully, four decades later. So read it as an alternative: it’s much longer as the new novel, but a dozen times as enjoyable.