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If certain authors enjoy an peak period, where they hit the pinnacle time after time, then American novelist John Irving’s extended through a series of four fat, gratifying works, from his late-seventies breakthrough His Garp Novel to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Those were generous, witty, big-hearted novels, connecting protagonists he describes as “misfits” to societal topics from women's rights to abortion.

Since Owen Meany, it’s been waning returns, save in size. His last novel, 2022’s The Chairlift Book, was 900 pages long of themes Irving had examined better in earlier novels (inability to speak, restricted growth, transgenderism), with a lengthy script in the center to fill it out – as if extra material were required.

Thus we come to a latest Irving with caution but still a small flame of expectation, which burns brighter when we learn that His Queen Esther Novel – a only four hundred thirty-two pages – “revisits the world of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 novel is one of Irving’s very best works, located largely in an orphanage in the town of St Cloud’s, run by Wilbur Larch and his assistant Homer Wells.

The book is a failure from a writer who previously gave such pleasure

In The Cider House Rules, Irving explored pregnancy termination and belonging with vibrancy, humor and an total empathy. And it was a major novel because it abandoned the themes that were becoming annoying tics in his books: grappling, ursine creatures, Vienna, the oldest profession.

The novel starts in the made-up town of New Hampshire's Penacook in the twentieth century's dawn, where the Winslow couple welcome teenage foundling the title character from the orphanage. We are a few decades ahead of the events of The Cider House Rules, yet Wilbur Larch stays identifiable: already dependent on the drug, adored by his caregivers, starting every speech with “In this place...” But his appearance in the book is limited to these opening scenes.

The Winslows worry about parenting Esther properly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “in what way could they help a young Jewish girl understand her place?” To tackle that, we flash forward to Esther’s grown-up years in the Roaring Twenties. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to the area, where she will become part of the Haganah, the Jewish nationalist armed group whose “goal was to protect Jewish settlements from Arab attacks” and which would eventually form the foundation of the Israel's military.

Those are enormous themes to take on, but having introduced them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is hardly about St Cloud’s and Dr Larch, it’s even more upsetting that it’s also not really concerning Esther. For causes that must involve story mechanics, Esther turns into a substitute parent for one more of the family's children, and bears to a son, James, in World War II era – and the lion's share of this book is Jimmy’s tale.

And here is where Irving’s fixations reappear loudly, both common and specific. Jimmy relocates to – where else? – the Austrian capital; there’s talk of avoiding the military conscription through bodily injury (His Earlier Book); a dog with a significant name (Hard Rain, meet the earlier dog from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, sex workers, novelists and genitalia (Irving’s recurring).

The character is a less interesting figure than the female lead hinted to be, and the secondary figures, such as young people the two students, and Jimmy’s instructor Eissler, are underdeveloped also. There are some enjoyable scenes – Jimmy deflowering; a confrontation where a couple of bullies get battered with a support and a tire pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has never been a nuanced novelist, but that is isn't the problem. He has consistently restated his points, telegraphed narrative turns and allowed them to build up in the audience's imagination before leading them to resolution in lengthy, shocking, entertaining scenes. For instance, in Irving’s books, anatomical features tend to go missing: remember the oral part in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those absences resonate through the story. In the book, a key character loses an arm – but we only find out 30 pages the finish.

Esther reappears toward the end in the book, but just with a final feeling of wrapping things up. We do not do find out the complete narrative of her time in Palestine and Israel. The book is a failure from a writer who in the past gave such joy. That’s the negative aspect. The upside is that His Classic Novel – I reread it together with this book – even now holds up beautifully, after forty years. So choose the earlier work as an alternative: it’s double the length as Queen Esther, but a dozen times as great.