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If certain authors experience an golden era, where they achieve the heights consistently, then American writer John Irving’s lasted through a series of four long, gratifying novels, from his 1978 breakthrough The World According to Garp to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. Those were generous, humorous, warm works, connecting characters he describes as “outsiders” to social issues from feminism to termination.

Since A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing returns, except in page length. His previous novel, the 2022 release The Last Chairlift, was nine hundred pages in length of topics Irving had examined more effectively in earlier works (selective mutism, short stature, gender identity), with a 200-page script in the middle to extend it – as if extra material were required.

Thus we look at a latest Irving with caution but still a faint glimmer of optimism, which glows brighter when we discover that Queen Esther – a mere 432 pages in length – “goes back to the universe of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties book is one of Irving’s top-tier novels, set primarily in an orphanage in St Cloud’s, Maine, managed by Dr Wilbur Larch and his protege Homer Wells.

This novel is a disappointment from a novelist who previously gave such joy

In The Cider House Rules, Irving discussed pregnancy termination and acceptance with richness, comedy and an total compassion. And it was a significant novel because it abandoned the topics that were becoming tiresome tics in his works: the sport of wrestling, ursine creatures, the city of Vienna, prostitution.

Queen Esther opens in the imaginary community of the Penacook area in the early 20th century, where Thomas and Constance Winslow take in young ward the protagonist from St Cloud’s. We are a a number of years before the events of The Cider House Rules, yet the doctor stays familiar: even then dependent on ether, respected by his staff, beginning every address with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his presence in the book is confined to these initial scenes.

The family worry about raising Esther properly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how might they help a young girl of Jewish descent discover her identity?” To answer that, we jump ahead to Esther’s grown-up years in the twenties era. She will be part of the Jewish migration to the area, where she will become part of Haganah, the Jewish nationalist armed force whose “goal was to defend Jewish settlements from hostile actions” and which would eventually become the basis of the Israel's military.

These are massive topics to take on, but having brought in them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s regrettable that Queen Esther is hardly about St Cloud’s and Dr Larch, it’s still more disheartening that it’s likewise not about Esther. For reasons that must involve plot engineering, Esther becomes a substitute parent for one more of the Winslows’ offspring, and bears to a male child, Jimmy, in the early forties – and the lion's share of this story is his narrative.

And now is where Irving’s obsessions return strongly, both common and specific. Jimmy moves to – naturally – the city; there’s mention of avoiding the Vietnam draft through self-mutilation (Owen Meany); a canine with a symbolic title (the dog's name, meet Sorrow from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, streetwalkers, novelists and male anatomy (Irving’s recurring).

He is a less interesting figure than the heroine suggested to be, and the secondary characters, such as young people the pair, and Jimmy’s tutor the tutor, are one-dimensional also. There are several enjoyable scenes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a confrontation where a few thugs get battered with a walking aid and a tire pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has not once been a delicate author, but that is not the problem. He has repeatedly reiterated his ideas, hinted at narrative turns and enabled them to gather in the viewer's thoughts before leading them to resolution in lengthy, surprising, entertaining sequences. For case, in Irving’s novels, physical elements tend to be lost: recall the speech organ in Garp, the finger in His Owen Book. Those missing pieces echo through the narrative. In this novel, a major character is deprived of an arm – but we just find out 30 pages the end.

The protagonist returns in the final part in the novel, but only with a final feeling of wrapping things up. We do not do find out the complete story of her life in the Middle East. The book is a letdown from a writer who in the past gave such delight. That’s the downside. The upside is that The Cider House Rules – upon rereading alongside this book – yet stands up wonderfully, four decades later. So pick up that as an alternative: it’s much longer as the new novel, but far as good.