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If certain novelists have an golden era, where they achieve the pinnacle repeatedly, then American author John Irving’s lasted through a sequence of four fat, satisfying novels, from his late-seventies success Garp to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. Such were generous, humorous, compassionate works, tying characters he refers to as “misfits” to cultural themes from gender equality to abortion.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been waning returns, save in size. His previous book, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages long of topics Irving had delved into more effectively in prior novels (selective mutism, dwarfism, transgenderism), with a two-hundred-page script in the middle to fill it out – as if padding were required.

So we approach a recent Irving with caution but still a small glimmer of expectation, which burns hotter when we find out that Queen Esther – a just 432 pages long – “revisits the world of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties book is one of Irving’s finest books, set primarily in an orphanage in St Cloud’s, Maine, operated by Wilbur Larch and his assistant Wells.

The book is a disappointment from a author who previously gave such delight

In His Cider House Novel, Irving discussed termination and identity with colour, humor and an all-encompassing compassion. And it was a significant book because it abandoned the subjects that were turning into repetitive tics in his works: wrestling, wild bears, Austrian capital, the oldest profession.

Queen Esther opens in the made-up town of Penacook, New Hampshire in the twentieth century's dawn, where the Winslow couple welcome 14-year-old orphan the protagonist from St Cloud’s. We are a few years prior to the action of The Cider House Rules, yet the doctor remains familiar: already dependent on ether, adored by his caregivers, beginning every address with “At St Cloud's...” But his presence in the book is confined to these initial sections.

The couple worry about raising Esther correctly: she’s Jewish, and “in what way could they help a young girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To tackle that, we flash forward to Esther’s later life in the twenties era. She will be part of the Jewish migration to Palestine, where she will join Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary group whose “goal was to protect Jewish communities from hostile actions” and which would later become the core of the Israel's military.

Such are enormous topics to take on, but having presented them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s frustrating that the novel is not actually about the orphanage and the doctor, it’s still more disheartening that it’s also not about Esther. For motivations that must involve narrative construction, Esther becomes a substitute parent for one more of the family's children, and bears to a baby boy, the boy, in 1941 – and the lion's share of this book is the boy's story.

And here is where Irving’s preoccupations reappear loudly, both typical and distinct. Jimmy goes to – where else? – the city; there’s mention of dodging the military conscription through bodily injury (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a canine with a significant designation (the animal, meet the canine from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, streetwalkers, writers and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

He is a less interesting figure than Esther hinted to be, and the secondary figures, such as students the pair, and Jimmy’s tutor Annelies Eissler, are one-dimensional as well. There are some amusing scenes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a fight where a handful of bullies get battered with a walking aid and a air pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not once been a delicate novelist, but that is is not the problem. He has consistently restated his arguments, foreshadowed story twists and let them to build up in the reader’s thoughts before leading them to resolution in extended, jarring, amusing moments. For instance, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to go missing: think of the tongue in Garp, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those losses echo through the story. In the book, a major person loses an limb – but we only find out thirty pages later the conclusion.

She reappears toward the end in the story, but just with a eleventh-hour feeling of wrapping things up. We never learn the complete narrative of her life in the Middle East. This novel is a disappointment from a novelist who in the past gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The upside is that The Cider House Rules – I reread it alongside this novel – even now holds up excellently, after forty years. So pick up that instead: it’s twice as long as this book, but 12 times as enjoyable.